THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT  OF 

Kate  Gordon  Moore 


• 


Cfie  @>iience0  of  t&e 


Silences  of 
t|)e  fl^oon 


By 


ILOIlDon:  John   Lane,  The 
Bodley  Head.  J®0to  gOtk: 

John  Lane  Company,  MCMXI 


COPYRIGHT,  I9II,  BY  JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 


D.  B.  UPDIKE,  THE  MERRYMOUNT  PRESS,  BOSTON,  U.  S.  A. 


TO  W.  COMPTON  LEITH 


865949 


of  t^e 


i 

EARLY  in  the  morning  I  saw  the 
pigeons  outward  bound  from  the 
opposite  wood,  with  the  sunlight  under 
their  wings,  for  the  sun  had  only  just 
risen.  Three  hours  later  I  saw  the  first 
butterfly;  it  was  a  common  white  one, 
but  it  stayed  with  me  for  ten  minutes 
and  inspected  every  flower.  Together  we 
made  the  round  of  all  my  beds,  stopping 
to  chat  with  the  glad-faced  occupants 
of  each,  like  any  couple  of  district  vis 
itors.  The  rosebuds  under  the  window 
are  still  unopened;  they  are  like  white 
hands  folded  in  prayer.  In  the  corner  by 
the  door  stand  the  tulips,  great  dames  of  a 
magnificence  grander  than  the  pomp  of 
Versailles — the  staunch  upholders  of  the 
garden's  dying  aristocracy.  These  strange 
flowers  seem  to  have  all  the  scornful  pride 
of  an  Atalanta  without  a  huntress's  grace 
of  bearing ;  but  they  have  most  of  the  femi 
nine  virtues — beauty  (both  of  form  and 
colour),  purity,  pride,  reserve.  If  you 
have  not  marked  the  latter  quality,  look 
at  them  in  their  prime,  when  their  cups 


'God 

Almighty  first 
planted  a 
Garden ' 


The  patrician 
tulip 


€be  Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 


House 
martins 


are  still  almost  nut-shaped:  you  will  see 
them  wear  an  expression  nearly  amount 
ing  to  primness.  Humility, which  we  only 
pretend  to  admire  in  women,  they  have 
not;  and  how  should  a  queen  among 
spring  flowers  be  humble?  They  are 
parables  understood  by  a  few,  and  by 
them  first  reverenced  and  afterwards 
loved.  That  rich  temperament  of  the 
midsummer  rose  is  as  far  removed  from 
them  as  is  the  daisy's  simplicity ;  but  more 
than  any  flower  they  have  the  sovereign 
beauty  of  a  nature  as  dual  and  contra 
dictory  as  humanity — and  feminine 
humanity  most  of  all.  For  their  colours, 
gorgeous  as  the  raiment  of  a  Cleopatra, 
are  a  standing  protest  against  their  chill 
spirituality;  they  are  like  painted  images 
of  the  Madonna.  In  this  strange  mingling 
of  the  voluptuous  and  the  ascetic  they 
continually  remind  us  of  passages  in 
Plato  and  the  Christian  mystics. 

I  HAVE  counted,  too,  over  fifty  house 
martins  sunning  themselves  on  the 
roof  at  once,  and  listened  to  their  twitter 
—  a  cooing  recitative  like  a  cradle-song, 
the  cradle-song  of  the  infant  summer, 
but  all  too  short  —  the  merest  gurgle  of 


oftbe^oon 


bubbling  notes.  It  is  so  soon  over,  like 
the  spring  that  it  sings  to,  and  like  the 
chelidonisma  or  swallow-song  which  the 
boys  and  maids  of  Hellas  sang  each  year 
at  the  return  of  the  migratory  birds. 

Now  the  sun  is  on  the  point  of  taking 
his  last  plunge,  and  for  a  few  moments 
I,  a  human  being  justly  self-despised, 
I  may  watch  the  pink  light  dreaming  in 
the  hollows  between  the  eternal  hills 
— the  hills  whose  eternity  passes  like  a 
dream. 

THE  rooks  are  coming  home  across 
meadows  of  fire,  where  lie  shadowy 
isles  which  are  really  the  tops  of  the  oak- 
trees.  To  see  them  rise  above  the  horizon, 
those  ominous  galleys  under  sail  before 
the  dying  breeze,  making  their  port  in 
yonder  patriarchal  elms,  to  watch  the 
first  of  the  flight,  an  old  hierarch  with 
conscious  premonition  in  every  flap  of 
his  wings,  is  to  travel  across  the  centu 
ries  in  an  instant  far  back  to  Aegeus  on 
the  promontory  of  Sunium  and  the  black- 
sailed  ship  from  the  cruel  isle  of  Crete. 
I  sometimes  think  that  if  the  voice  of 
the  nightingale  brings  us  to  such  thoughts 
as  Plato  called  a  '  recollection '  of  the 


CHAPTER 

I 


Rooks 


4 


Cfce  Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 


'Mothy 
curfewtide' 


divine,  and  if  the  blackbird  and  thrush 
sing,  one  the  melancholy  and  the  other 
the  joy  of  earthly  existence,  then  in 
these  black  hulls  of  the  heavens  there  is 
something  unearthly  and  Plutonian.  That 
cry  of  inexpressible  foreboding  from  a 
throat  hoarse  with  the  repetition  through 
immemorial  generations  of  one  caco 
phonous  chord  was  surely  heard  upon 
the  banks  of  Cocytus,  c  River  of  Wail- 
ing'! 

NOW  the  rooks  are  still, the  black 
bird's  crescendo  of  groundless 
alarm  has  subsided,  and  the  starlings 
have  stopped  whistling  amazement  over 
their  scandals;  even  the  sparrows  are 
tired  of  their  own  endless  dialectic.  One 
of  those'  night-sailing  skiffs  of  the  mea 
dows,  the  cockchafers,  has  just  tacked 
across  the  garden  and  rounded  the  house 
with  the  purblind  navigation  of  all  his 
race.  The  cows  by  the  river,  the  sheep 
under  the  hill's  lea,  the  dogs  at  outlying 
farms  who  take  it  in  turns  to  bark  in  the 
tentative  manner  of  children  beginning 
to  cry,  all  are  silent  at  last ;  only  the 
owl  is  abroad,  chilling  the  woods  with  his 
banshee  note. 


oft&e 


SO  with  me  has  passed  one  of  the 
spring  days  at  which  man  has  no 
time  to  wonder,  because  he  is  so  busily 
'making  money.'  Fool! 

I  AM  a  slave  and  dependent  of  Nature, 
but  what  a  freedom  that  is  !  I  live  like 
the  birds  and  beasts,  having  wilfully 
abandoned  all  that  is  held  to  be  true  and 
right  in  religion  and  in  ethics ;  but  I  have 
taken  my  stand  on  the  only  immovable 
truth  that  man  has  yet  found.  I  am 
already  forgetting  to  covet  my  fellows' 
wealth  and  to  hanker  after  their  creeds; 
my  riches  and  religion  are  both  to  be 
found  in  the  earth's  fruits,  and  my  creed 
cannot  be  recited  or  put  into  a  book, 
but  only  pondered  and  lived. 

IT  is  a  searching  test  of  true  poetry  and 
lofty  prose  to  enquire  into  the  quan 
tity  of  thought  and  imagination  which 
is  compressed  into  a  single  epithet.  Ho 
mer's  '  rosy-fingered  Dawn '  and  Milton's 
'  sable-vested  Night '  are  not  mere  nouns 
with  adjectives  attached  to  them;  they  are 
themselves  part  of  the  mint  from  which 
singers  coin  their  fancies;  to  change  the 
figure,  they  are  the  germs  which  under 


CHAPTER 

I 

'Sic 
transit — ' 


Freedom 


'Arnica 
silentia 
lunae' 


Silences 


CHAPTER 

I 


the  shaping  care  of  another  poet  may 
some  day  grow  into  a  lyric,  as  a  phrase 
of  primitive  speech  has  so  often  grown 
into  a  myth.  You  remember,  reader,  the 
occasion  of  those  three  words  in  the 
Aeneid — arnica  silentia  lunae?  The  Ar- 
gives  had  left  their  wooden  horse  before 
the  walls  of  Troy,  had  embarked  their 
troops  and  drawn  off  their  fleet  as  if  in 
precipitate  flight.  Packed  with  silent,  lis 
tening  heroes,  the  great  beast  stood  alone 
upon  the  windy  Ilian  plain.  The  Trojans, 
an  inquisitive  mob  of  chieftains  and  men- 
at-arms,  came  down  from  the  city  to  make 
a  circuit  of  its  giant  form;  the  voice  of 
Sinon,  the  traitor,  raised  in  the  plausi 
ble  rhetoric  of  his  race,  reached  faintly 
the  ears  of  the  prisoned  company.  For  a 
moment,  when  Laocoon,  suspecting  the 
treachery,  hurled  his  spear  into  the  flank 
of  the  horse,  the  fate  of  Priam's  kingdom 
still  hung  balanced;  but  there  was  a  call 
for  ropes  and  rollers,  and  a  hundred  half- 
willing  hands  dragged  the  monster  into 
the  city  as  a  trophy  and  a  sacrifice  to  Pal 
las.  The  sun  fell  seaward;  the  shadows 
lay  like  fallen  colossi  upon  the  plains;  the 
guards  upon  the  walls  might  have  seen 
the  peaks  of  Ida  blush  and  darken  and 


vanish — but  there  were  no  guards  upon 
the  walls  to  heed  the  sight,  for  in  the 
city  were  revels  and  music.  Night  fell. 
The  songs  languished,  and,  one  by  one, 
ceased  —  for  ever. 

'Vertitur  interea  coelum  et  ruit  Oceano  nox, 
Involvens  umbra  magna  terramque  polumque 
Myrmidonumque  dolos;  fusi  per  moenia  Teucri 
Conticuere  j  sopor  fessos  compleftitur  artus. 
Et  jam  Argiva  phalanx  instruftis  navibus  ibat 
A  Tenedo  tacitae  per  arnica  silentia  lunae 
Litora  nota  petens.' 

AENEID,  n.  250. 

I  have  been  a  long  while  in  getting  to 
the  point:  I  pray  the  reader's  forgive 
ness.  But  — '  The  friendly  silences  of 
the  moon ' !  I  feel  as  if  I  must  cry  out, 
as  De  Quincey  cried  about  a  passage 
in  Hydriotapkia, '  What  ifluctus  decuma- 
nus  of  rhetoric  ! '  Those  three  words  are 
among  my  most  priceless  possessions; 
they  are  set  high  among  my  mind's  Pe 
nates  beside  a  flower-spray  of  Sappho's 
song  and  a  sob  from  the  melodies  of 
Mozart,  beside  a  few  of  those  chipped 
fragments  and  battered  torsos  of  poetry 
for  which  we  would  willingly  lose  a  whole 
epic.  Mark  'the  silences  of  the  moon'  — 
not  'silence' — as  if  she  had  fits  or  moods 
of  silence  ;  and  so  she  has.  You,  reader, 


CHAPTER 
I 


Cfce  Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 


•W.B.Yeats, 

The    Shadowy 
Waters. 


Created 
personality 


if  you  have  watched  the  variable  moods 
of  Nature  and  know  their  startling  hu 
manity,  will  not  accuse  me  of  romanc 
ing  ;  you  can  recall  a  thousand  days  and 
nights  when  not  two  hearts  alone,  but 
three  hearts  seemed  to  beat  together; 
when  it  was  your  comradeship  that  the 
birds  sang  about  and  your  thoughts  that 
the  trees  whispered  each  to  his  friend  and 
neighbour.  You  know  also,  if  you  have 
gazed  from  the  hills  at  the  graceful 
wheeling  of  the  heavens,  the  long  spaces 
of  night-stillness  when  the  pulse  of  the 
world  seems  to  have  stopped,  but  the 
pulses  of  her  two  children  are  racing  — 
the  pauses  between  a  smile  and  a  smile, 
between  a  dream  and  a  dream ;  surely, 
these  are  'the  friendly  silences  of  the 
moon '  ? 

'I  looked  upon  the  moon, 
Longing  to  knead  and  pull  it  into  shape 
That  I  might  lay  it  on  your  head  as  a  crown.'* 

IT  is  something  besides  the  familiar 
ity  and  comparative  nearness  of  the 
moon  which  has  made  her  the  patient 
confidante  of  the  sorrowful  for  centu 
ries.  In  that  apparently  placid,  yet  seared 
and  tortured  shape,  seeming  aged,  yet 


of  t&e 


really  of  so  young  and  transient  an  exist 
ence  as  to  demand  our  human  sympathy, 
once  by  man  endowed  with  divinity,  yet 
really  more  helpless  than  man,  we  can 
discern  the  likeness  of  a  personality  re 
mote,  but  not  inaccessible,  lovely,  be 
nign,  and  ironically  made  helpless — the 
semblance  of  such  a  happily  feminine 
temperament  as  that  one  of  which  Pope 
tenderly  has  written: 

'  An  equal  mixture  of  good  humour 
And  sensible  soft  melancholy.' 

The  millions  of  pensive  mortal  eyes  that 
have  gazed  upon  her,  the  thousands  of 
passionate-speaking  mortal  lips  that  have 
sung  to  her,  have  given  her  this  accumu 
lative  personality  of  infinite  tenderness 
and  delicacy;  thus  also  the  broad  and 
smiling  heaven  became  under  the  light 
touch  of  a  few  Aryan  generations  the 
broad-smiling  Dyaus  or  Zeus  who  was 
so  amiable  to  mortal  women.  As  in  the 
ploughlands  which  have  seen  so  many 
golden  harvests,  in  the  cliffs  which  have 
faced  so  many  furies  of  storm,  so  there  is 
a  deceptive  show  of  permanence  in  this 
worn  phantom  of  a  world  which  has  been 
present  as  a  speechless,  derisive  spectator 


CHAPTER 

I 


IO 


Cfre 


CHAPTER 
I 


De  profundis 


at  countless  of  the  dramatic  splendours 
and  follies  of  man.  We  are  looking  upon 
the  face  which  lonely  Hagar  looked  upon 
in  the  desert,  which  little  Ishmael  won 
dered  at,  and  which  was  turned  to  pallor 
by  certain  bonfires  of  Nero. 

Cornelius  Agrippa,  with  that  half-con 
scious  sublimity  of  symbolism  which  was 
peculiar  to  the  medieval  pseudo-sciences, 
speaks  of  the  moon  as  having  astrological 
influence  over  wildernesses,  woods,  rocks 
and  mountains,  waters  and  seashores  — 
that  is  to  say,  over  the  habitations  of  soli 
tude  and  non-human  voices,  in  places 
where  Eternity  is  almost  a  materialised 
presence.  To  step  out  into  moonlight  is, 
after  all,  to  step  into  the  presence  of  a 
god ;  sorrow  which  has  ached  for  what 
seemed  many  ages  melts  away  at  the 
touch  of  so  rich  a  maturity,  so  deep  an 
experience ;  it  is  as  though  in  the  midst 
of  our  whimpering  we  were  suddenly 
confronted  by  the  Mater  Dolorosa. 

BUT,  alas !  sometimes  it  happens  that 
these  silences  are  all  too  unbroken. 
We  fly  from  the  coarseness  and  tangi 
bility  of  human    sympathy  to   wander 
under  those  rays  which  we  have  known 


oftbe^oon 


to  fall  upon  the  sense  like  the  memory 
of  a  dead  and  forgotten  song.  But  now 
they  descend  upon  a  face  twisted  with 
agony  like  rain  upon  the  wrinkled  foli 
age  of  a  tree  which  ivy  is  strangling; 
everything  near  breaks  into  a  long  sigh 
of  thankfulness,  but  for  that  one  tree 
no  thrill  of  refreshment  is  possible.  We 
know  that  under  these  same  beams  in 
palaces  and  hovels  children  are  sobbing 
pitifully,  women  are  trying  to  pray,  men 
are  hating  and  cursing;  the  lambs  in  the 
meadow  are  bleating  of  their  imaginary 
discomforts,  the  creatures  of  night  weary 
ing  themselves  with  surreptitious  crusades 
against  theirweaker  fellows.  Thethought 
of  all  this  multiform  misery  unrolling  it 
self  under  the  calm  glances  of  the  rising 
orb,  while  it  may  and  does  shew  us  the 
comparative  insignificance  of  our  proper 
troubles,  shews  also  the  real  impotence 
of  even  the  loveliest  and  most  powerful 
beauty  to  drug  the  gnawing  pains  of  grief. 

IN  whatever  aspect  we  look  at  Nature 
we  see  her  a  creature  of  moods,  and 
of  our  moods:  joyful,  because  all  her 
children  are  sometimes  joyful ;  sorrow 
ing,  because  they  must  mourn ;  passion- 


CHAPTER 

i 


Nature's 
sympathy 


C&e 


CHAPTER 
I 


ate,  for  they  are  passionate  too.  Thus  it 
is  that  at  one  time  the  crescent  moon 
will  look  like  an  old  man,  wrinkled  and 
hunchbacked  and  wan,  at  another  like 
the  incarnation  of  a  dream.  In  this  adapt 
able  sympathy  towards  us  of  each  giant 
and  weakling  among  earthly  things — of 
the  violet  and  the  pine  no  less  than  the 
moon  —  is  deeply  hidden  the  unity  of 
purpose  which  lies  at  the  heart  of  all  ex 
istence  and  which  shaped  the  first  stir 
rings  of  religion  into  animistic  and  pan 
theistic  forms.  Let  my  will  be  thwarted 
and  my  spirit  crushed;  the  bluff  rock 
rallies  me  to  defiance,  for  does  it  not 
speak  of  hardihood  and  mineral  wealth 
gained  by  the  weight  of  burden  laid  upon 
burden  and  carried  through  immemorial 
years?  At  times  I  may  long  for  wealth 
and  glitter,  but  then  the  pine  whispers 
of  beauty  and  the  austerity  of  her  songs, 
of  freedom  and  her  sternness,  of  poverty 
and  the  hermit's  ever  increasing  store. 
And  here  I  must  take  leave  to  enter 
upon  a  digression,  for  except  in  the  light 
of  such  digression  these  attributes  of  the 
pine — its  aloofness  and,  as  it  were,  a 
certain  inscrutable  sanctity — may  seem 
arbitrary  or  fantastic  ideas  of  my  own. 


oftfoe 


EVEN  in  his  dimly  lighted  age  Plato 
could  linger  tenderly  over  the  idea, 
darkly  expressed,  of  character  in  inor 
ganic  and  low  organic  forms  of  life  —  of 
personality  which  a  relentless  Power  had 
doomed  never  or  very  gradually  to  pass 
beyond  the  embryonic  stage  of  existence. 
We,  with  our  wider  outlook  upon  Nature, 
can  single  out  as  from  a  panorama  some 
flower  here,  there  a  tree  or  a  rock,  and, 
with  searching,  find  in  it  some  trace  of 
those  qualities  which  by  force  of  estab 
lished  habit  we  attribute  to  humanity 
alone.  Let  us  remember  the  monastic 
ideal  of  starvation — social,  intellectual, 
and  bodily.  Let  us  remember  how  Pater 
speaks  of  l  the  clear,  cold,  inaccessible, 
impossible  heights  of  the  Book  of  the 
Imitation.'  Then  at  one  time  or  another, 
however  subconsciously,  the  thought 
must  come  to  us,  what  an  ascetic  among 
trees  is  the  pine!  Think,  how  it  loves 
a  poor  soil;  how  it  can  live  on  sand  and 
rock ;  how  it  can  breathe  the  rarefied  air  of 
mountain-tops  ;  how  its  delight  is  in  con 
ditions  which  to  the  grosser  folk  of  its 
kind  would  bring  blasted  branches  and 
death.  Its  chill  spirituality  makes  it  the 
fit  companion  of  silence  and  the  undy- 


CHAPTER 

i 

Personality 
again 


The  pine 


Cfce 


CHAPTER 
I 


The  speech 
of  dumb 
things 


ing  snows.  Moreover,  like  a  cowled  fig 
ure,  low-voiced  and  sparely  clad,  it  sug 
gests  less  of  time  than  of  eternity;  there 
is  something  lurid  and  unearthly  about 
its  bare,  reddish  trunk  and  funereal 
crest;  its  voice  is  hollow,  like  the  voices 
of  all  coniferous  trees.  So  are  the  voices 
of  poor,  stripped  branches  in  winter  and 
of  a  man  who  feels  himself  chilled  by 
the  shadow  of  nearing  death.  It  would 
seem,  too,  that  the  pines  have  learned 
the  secret  of  the  waves  and  murmur  it 
to  their  own  hearts  day  and  night ;  so 
faithfully  do  they  mimic  the  primordial 
cadences  of  the  shore. 

FROM  Nature  we  may  learn  all  vir 
tues  and  true  arts ;  from  the  poplar 
its  solitary  introspection,  and  patience 
from  the  watching  heron.  There  are 
aisles  in  the  arching  grass  where  ants 
walk  as  mightily  as  bishops;  and  what 
builder  can  imitate  the  symmetry  of 
spruce  or  larch  ?  Nothing,  if  it  is  true 
to  its  own  nature,  is  contemptible.  Out 
of  'dumb'  matter  we  derive  all  purity  of 
colour  and  most  beauties  of  line;  and  to 
the  visible  materialisations  of  Nature  be 
long  the  accumulated  wisdom  and  song  of 


oftbe  cpoon 


all  the  world  since  the  Chaldeans  first  felt 
their  kinship  with  the  stars;  she  is  the 
true  Pallas  Athene,  in  wisdom  eternally 
at  her  prime,  in  beauty  immortally  fair. 

WHAT  a  glorious  belief  is  that  in 
the  immortality  of  the  human 
memory!  It  delights  me  to  think  that 
all  my  recolle&ions  are  painted  in  col 
ours  more  permanent  than  the  worlds ; 
that  when  the  great  nebula  in  Orion  has 
settled  down  to  an  orderly  existence  as 
a  group  of  solar  systems,  when  its  plan 
ets  have  cooled,  become  habitable,  and 
passed  on  to  such  desolation  as  we  see 
upon  our  own  satellite,  I  shall  still  re 
member  how  many  times  I  watched  the 
transient  apocalypse  which  mencall'sun- 
set.'  Once  I  looked  west  up  the  ancient 
valley  of  the  Severn,  of  old  a  chain  of 
lakes,  now  a  surge  of  pastures,  rolling  in 
billowy  perspective  from  somewhere  be 
neath  the  horizon  —  mountainous  green 
waves  dotted  with  black  coppices  and 
black  fallows.  Along  the  green  of  earth 
lay  the  green  of  atmosphere,  evening's 
miracle  of  transparent  colour,  the  lowest 
rung  of  a  spectrum;  above  that  the  strata 
of  clouds,  tiers  of  solemn  spectators  at 


CHAPTER 

i 


Memory 


i6 


Cfce  Silences 


CHAPTER 

I 


a  world-drama — the  lowest  cloud,  apall ; 
the  next,  a  veil;  the  third,  a  pink  rose 
petal;  the  fourth,  a  golden  fleece;  thefifth, 
a  thin  flame — what  an  allegory  !  In  the 
northwest  and  across  the  zenith  danced 
a  swarm  of  evanescent  shapes,  gayest 
ephemera  of  theheavens, dying  and  com 
ing  to  a  new  birth  in  a  few  moments 
— melting  into  the  infinite  background 
and  painting  it  over  again  as  with  a 
master  hand — airy  swimmers,  diving, 
as  it  seemed,  beneath  a  blue  surface  and 
rising  to  view  further  on  in  the  wind's 
wake.  Southward  the  clouds  were  denser, 
but  feathery  still — little  black  feathers, 
dishevelled  and  angry;  little  white  fea 
thers,  full  of  light;  little  gold  feathers,  full 
of  fire — beneath  them,  the  moon,  a  slen 
der  fairy,  curled  to  sleep  above  a  spec 
tral  horizon,  where  the  hills,  robed  in 
a  golden  chlamys,  were  less  substantial 
than  the  clouds.  I  looked  eastward  down 
the  valley,  and  saw  detached  and  shat 
tered  and  drifting  forms,  ghosts  of  de 
parted  cumuli — the  cloudy  cattle  of  the 
gods  driven  home  from  their  pasture  in 
high  heaven.  The  top  of  the  opposite  hill 
gradually  ceased  to  show  points  of  vivid 
light,  the  reflection  of  the  west  in  ob- 


oftfceepoon 


scure  cottage  windows;  the  roan  cows  on 
the  hillside  lower  down  were  no  longer 
blood-red  spots  in  a  meadow  of  fire. 

Having  seen  but  once  this  unveiling 
of  an  existence  more  beautiful  than  him 
self,  what  man  can  die  in  misery? 

THAT  dogmatism  which  denies  to 
the  flowers  the  possession  of  any 
thing  but  growth  and  procreative  power, 
and  names  them  inanimate  or  soulless 
things,  men  call  science.  I  call  it  blind 
ness.  When  they  talk  of  the  proletariat 
and  its  vegetative  existence,  they  cast  a 
slur  on  the  delicate  lily  and  on  the  au 
stere  pine.  They  have  read  The  Sensitive 
Plant  and  Melampus,  yet  they  can  still 
tell  me  with  scorn  in  their  eyes  and  on 
their  lips  that  I  do  not  live,  but  vegetate. 
They  are  right —  of  course  I  vegetate.  I 
would  willingly  make  a  vaunt  of  my  adop 
tion  into  the  race  which  can  boast  of  the 
rose  and  the  lily  and  the  common  grass  ; 
I  am  with  them  in  all  seasons,  in  their 
birth  and  in  their  dying ;  in  time  they 
will  tell  me  more  of  themselves,  and  I 
shall  become  less  blind  to  their  beauty, 
quicker  of  ear  to  their  undertones  of  mer 
riment  and  ruth. 


CHAPTER 

i 


Science 

and 
blindness 


Cfre  Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 

Modern 
animism 


IN  our  childhood  we  fly  to  Nature  as 
to  a  mother;  in  youth  she  is  our 
mistress,  who  has  reckoned  the  greatest 
hearts  in  all  history  among  her  lovers ; 
in  age  we  sit  at  her  feet  with  tears  in  our 
eyes  because  it  seems  that  we  must  soon 
look  no  more  upon  her  features.  It  is 
then  at  the  last  that  each  of  us  finds  com 
fort  —  some  more,  some  less  —  in  a  cer 
tain  animistic  veneration  of  her  beauty, 
in  strengthening  our  kinship  with  her 
who  has  been  to  us  mother  and  queen, 
in  drawing  into  our  own  lives  the  impul 
siveness  of  the  wind  and  the  patience  of 
the  sea,  the  harmony  of  natural  colours 
and  voices  and  forms.  From  flowers 
and  trees  and  the  strata  of  rocks  we  learn 
the  beauty  of  silent  growth  and  its  ulti 
mate  strength  ;  we  see  that,  as  Emerson 
told  us, c  the  force  of  character  is  cumula 
tive,'  and  we  begin  to  apply  the  maxim  to 
what  fools  call  dumb  matter.  For  the  rose, 
the  pine,  and  the  mountain  are  speech 
less  only  because  the  strident  human 
voice  shouts  them  down  ;  if  we  would 
but  be  silent,  and  learn  their  moods, 
and  honour  their  diffidence  and  reserve 
as  we  honour  that  of  a  woman  or  of  a 
friend,  then  we  should  learn  that  their 


oftbe 


lives  are  not  motionless  nor  unprogres- 
sive,  nor  lived  for  the  moment's  beauty 
or  utility  alone,  but  that  they  are  full  of 
an  infinite  and  primeval  purpose,  full 
of  an  upward  striving  and  flaming,  differ 
ent  merely  in  degree  from  the  striving  of 
animals  and  mankind  and  the  gods,  or 
—  as  we  call  these  latter  now  —  heroes, 
patriots,  seers.  But  the  animistic  habit  of 
thought,  though  it  is  found  in  all  of  us, 
is  habitual  only  to  a  few.  We  have  read 
Plato,  it  may  be,  and  so  we  can  sympa 
thise  with  the  search  for  personality  in 
every  'dumb'  thing;  yet  to  remember  in 
daily  life  that  the  crocus  and  violet  can 
tell  us  of  other  things  besides  spring,  is 
not  always  easy ;  to  watch  for  individ 
uality  in  every  cloud  and  every  breath 
of  wind  is  possible  hardly  to  anyone  in 
a  world  which  deifies  man's  wealth  and 
slights  the  uncoined  riches  of  beast  and 
flower. 

IT  will  be  said,  I  know,  that  this  at 
tachment  of  mine  to  the  flowers  is 
only  a  monomania,  that  a  rose  is  a  rose, 
a  cabbage  a  cabbage,  and  there 's  an  end 
of  the  matter.  But  if  we  think  for  a  mo 
ment, — we  who  profess  so  great  a  love 


CHAPTER 

i 


Animism  the 
eternal  creed 


C6c  Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 


The  aspiring 
spiril, 


for  4  the  glory  that  was  Greece,'  —  we 
can  hardly  deny  that  this  almost  inevit 
able  flight  of  the  sorrowful,  the  love- 
stricken,  the  disillusioned,  to  the  flowers 
that  nod  so  wisely  over  our  perplexities 
and  the  trees  that  droop  and  sigh  with 
us  in  our  woe,  is  a  flight  along  the  same 
road  as  the  Hellenes  took  in  those  dreams 
of  theirs  where  they  stumbled  among  the 
tales  of  Daphne  and  Clytie  and  Narcis 
sus  and  Hyacinthus  and  many  another. 
The  fragility  of  plant  life,  its  flamelike 
glory  and  flamelike  evanescence,  make 
of  it  a  satirical  parallel  to  humanity  and 
its  vaunted  permanences.  For  the  flowers 
pass  away  even  while  we  gaze,  yet  they 
outlive  the  promises  on  which  once  we 
set  our  faith,  and  their  perfume  is  less 
transient  than  the  ideals  for  which  once 
we  willingly  would  have  died. 

TOOK  how  the  crocus,  most  impa- 
1  j  tient  of  delay  and  restraint,  cleaves 
the  sod  with  its  tender  leaves !  In  this 
upward  striving,  not  to  be  resisted  by 
any  earthy  power,  the  delicate  flower  is 
comrade  to  the  long  array  of  saints  and 
heroes — is  engaged  in  the  same  conflict, 
animated  by  the  same  buoyant  spirit. 


of  tbe 


There  is  wisdom  in  that  story  of  Jack 
and  the  Great  Beanstalk  that  grew  up  to 
heaven  ;  it  teaches  us  to  look  beyond  the 
law  of  gravitation.  I  hear  people  say  that 
it  is  an  impossible  fairy-tale ;  I  say  that 
it  is  founded  on  facT: — the  fa£t  of  end 
less  growth,  or,  if  you  will,  of  evolution. 
Nor  is  it  any  marvel  when  Xanthus,  the 
tawny-maned,  or  the  good  steed  Gran 
talks  with  Achilles  or  Gudrun  :  the  gift 
of  speech  is  denied  to  nothing  that  can 
be  apprehended  by  our  five  senses. 

AS  youth  fades  from  us  like  a  soft- 
.XJL  coloured  dream,  we  begin  to  weary 
of  this  militant  and  aspiring  spirit;  our 
vernal  optimism  loses  its  vivid  colouring 
and  puts  on  a  russet  cloak  ;  our  outlook 
grows  a  little  more  melancholy  and  au 
tumnal  ;  having  proved  all  things  and 
paid  the  priceless  tribute  of  enthusiasm 
at  the  shrine  of  many  a  saint  and  phi 
losopher,  we  gather  together,  as  devout 
pilgrims,  the  relics  which  from  time  to 
time  we  found  and  laid  aside,  and  tramp 
away  with  them,  our  most  valued  trea 
sure,  to  lay  them — creeds  and  ideals  and 
philosophies  and  dreams  (I  put  them 
in  order  of  climax)  —  at  the  feet  of  the 


CHAPTER 
I 


Enthusiasms 


Cbe  Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 


only  steadfast  mother  of  them  all,  whom, 
when  we  have  once  devoutly  approached, 
we  shall  never  leave  either  for  the  world 
with  its  philtres  and  spells,  or  for  the 
cloister's  coronal  of  painless  sighs.  Yet 
to  find  a  rest  in  Nature  is  not  to  join  the 
castaways  on  a  lotos  isle ;  she  hands  us 
no  narcotic,  but  a  stimulant  —  not  a 
phial  from  Lethe,  but  the  ne&ar  of  the 
Everliving  Ones.  It  is  true  that  hereby 
we  become  forgetful  of  much  which  we 
formerly  held  sacred ;  that  is  the  penalty 
of  every  conversion.  It  is  true  that  our 
enthusiasms  will  lose  their  keen  edge ; 
they  are  to  be  merged  in  the  one  enthu 
siasm  truly  so  called  (we  gain  everything 
by  remembering  the  word's  derivation), 
which  brooks  no  rival  faith.  If  it  is  their 
fate  to  grow  dull,  yet  our  senses  will  be 
quickened  and  our  hearts  made  to  beat 
high  by  an  intimate  converse  with  a 
wider,  saner  world  than  that  of  politics 
or  society,  a  converse  unbroken  by  pro 
pagandist  street-cries;  we  soon  find  that 
a  sparrow  can  teach  us  more  of  the  spirit 
of  Nature  than  the  Pre-Raphaelites. 


I 


T  was   a  deeper   wisdom   than   we 
think  which  conceived  the  circle  to 


oftbe^oon 


be  the  fundamental  form,  the  symbolical 
sum  and  limit  of  all  endeavour.  Since  the 
beginning  of  history  we  have  been  sor 
rowfully  familiar  with  renascence  and 
decadence  and  darkness  and  renascence 
again,  following  each  other  as  inevitably 
as  the  watches  of  day  and  night.  The 
Golden  Ages  of  Hellenic,  of  Italian  art 
were  gone  almost  as  soon  as  men  began 
to  suspect  their  presence  ;  the  glorious 
dawn  of  medieval  philosophy, which  gave 
birth  to  the  dreams  of  universal  know 
ledge  and  universal  sovereignty  over 
Nature's  economy,  passed  into  an  era 
of  empiricism  and  disagreeable  fa6ts  and 
what  America  calls  sham-smashing.  In 
later  times  we  have  climbed  from  Pales- 
trina  to  Wagner;  and  who  shall  say  that 
Parsifal  is  wholly  a  triumph  and  not  in 
some  ways  ominous  of  decline  ?  Before 
we  know  that  we  have  topped  the  wave 
we  are  rushing  headlong  into  the  trough  ; 
who  will  blame  us  if  we  cry  out  against 
this  bitterness  ?  There  is  one  remedy  and 
only  one,  for  aught  that  I  know:  let  us 
go  for  comfort  to  her  whose  ideal  is  un 
changing,  whose  existence  is  one  long 
Saturnian  reign,  and  in  whom  we  can 
discern  neither  decadence,  nor  renas- 


CHAPTER 

i 


The  eternal 
Golden  Age 


Cfre 


CHAPTER 
I 


cence,  nor  prime,  but  the  graceful  mo 
tion  of  evolution  alone.  She  is  no  strange 
Goddess  whom  we  are  to  set  out  to  re 
store,  for  our  fathers,  the  cave-dwellers, 
worshipped  her  in  their  own  crude  way  ; 
the  Hellenes,  our  ancestors  in  art  and 
thought,  served  her  under  a  hundred  dif 
ferent  names,  but  with  fear  and  rever 
ence  always;  the  philosophy  of  the  Re 
nascence,  with  its  noble  contempt  of 
authority  and  the  idols  of  dogma,  was  no 
less  than  a  return  to  her  religion  from 
the  stilted  creed,  of  gorgeous,  wonder 
ful,  stiffened  raiment,  which  saw  a  devil 
in  the  nightingale  and  damnation  in  all 
the  five  senses.  These  were  her  servants, 
her  worshippers,  her  students ;  it  has  been 
left  for  us  and  for  our  children  to  be 
called  her  lovers.  In  the  future  we  shall 
speak  of  Wordsworth  and  Turner  as  we 
speak  now  of  Dante  and  Cimabue  ;  they 
will  be  as  the  outrunners  of  a  host  or 
the  first  stars  of  a  rising  constellation. 
But  then,  as  it  seems,  after  the  first 
years  must  come  the  reaction;  under  the 
law  of  eternal  motion  and  change  this 
passionate  Nature-spirit,  which  now  so 
softly  walks  among  us,  will  be  whirling 
back  to  its  apogee,  and  we  shall  return 


oftfieeioon 


from  the  companionship  of  flowers  to 
grubbing  with  our  fellow-men  in  the 
search  for  misery  and  gold.  We  shall  be 
just  as  we  were — perhaps,  a  little  more 
soured  and  broken-spirited.  Now  this  is 
an  objection  which  cannot  be  answered  ; 
but  let  any  man  come  to  Nature  as  a 
true  lover,  and  if  he  has  thenceforward 
no  longing  to  forsake  her,  he  has  already 
answered  it  for  himself. 

I  KNOW  that  there  is  danger  in  such 
a  forgetfulness  of  what  custom  fool 
ishly  calls  the  realities  of  life;  that  there 
arises  a  temptation  to  sing  philosophy  to 
sleep  with  Arcadian  ditties  :  but  it  may  be 
overcome,  if  we  remember  that  Nature 
asks  more  of  us  than  the  woodcraft  and 
weather-wisdom  of  a  yokel,  which  is  but 
a  few  stages  above  instinct.  As  her  gifts 
to  us  have  been  more  lavish,  so  she  re 
quires  a  worthier  return;  the  countryman 
sees  her  reflection  in  his  folklore,  we  in 
our  sciences  and  creeds.  The  bucolic 
types  of  II  Pastor  Fido  and  of  the  Wessex 
novels  touch  the  flying  skirt  of  Nature's 
garment — surely,  that  is  why  we  love 
them? — but  we  ourselves  shall  look  in 
her  face,  because  we  are  the  heirs  of  the 


CHAPTER 
I 


Bona  Dea 


Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 


art  and  poetry  and  wisdom  of  centuries. 
For  in  listening  to  the  voice  of  Aratus  or 
Turner  we  are  listening  to  an  echo  of  her 
own,  and  when  they  have  taught  us  of 
the  stars  and  the  sun's  rising  and  setting, 
we  become  clearer  of  vision.  We  fall 
short  in  some  measure  of  the  monkish 
and  Neoplatonic  ideals;  we  do  not  think 
of  all  fair  forms  and  colours  as  no  more 
than  a  prototype  or  a  shadow,  but  the 
earth  and  her  divers  races  become  more 
real.  We  learn  to  view  man  from  an  out 
lying  peak  on  his  own  horizon;  not  from 
his  own  standpoint,  but  from  the  stand 
point  of  the  rest  of  existence;  then  our 
intimacy  with  the  non-human  economy 
grows  apace.  Animism  is  an  air  which 
has  outworn  many  variations,  many  a 
stirring  song  and  grafted  melody.  It  is 
as  old  as  religion  and  as  modern  as  Em 
erson.  Among  those  to  whom  Nature  is 
rather  a  mistress  than  a  veiled  and  speech 
less  nun  an  animistic  habit  of  thought  is 
almost  universal ;  such  as  love  Nature  for 
herself  cannot  choose  but  worship  her. 
Many  people  think  that  they  love  Nature 
because  she  is  God's  wonderful  creation  ; 
they  must  love  her  alone,  and  only  thus 
will  she  reveal  to  them  her  secrets.  The 


waverers  will  say  that  to  know  her  a  man 
must  be  a  pagan;  but  he  must  be  more 
than  that  —  he  must  be  a  whole-hearted 
idolater. 

IN  nature,  in  art,  in  life,  in  religion, 
in  philosophy,  the  foreground  is  no 
thing  ;  only  the  distance  matters.  Show 
us  a  landscape  full  of  light,  and  it  is  the 
distance  that  gives  us  the  subtler  grada 
tions  of  colour;  in  life  we  fix  our  eyes 
on  the  future,  in  religion  on  Heaven  or 
Nirvana;  in  philosophy  we  may  concede 
or  reject  the  premises,  but  nearly  always 
we  admire  the  conclusions.  Men  may 
dislike  the  preliminary  'blasphemies'  of 
Nietzsche,  but  they  cannot  despise  the 
ideal  which  he  built  up  from  their  chaos. 
Such  ideals  lie  on  the  horizon  of  thought, 
and  it  is  the  glory  of  their  vague  forms 
and  colours  which  allures  us  to  study  the 
truth  of  their  foreground.  How  many 
people  must  have  first  read  Plato  because 
in  some  stray  quotation  they  caught  an 
echo  from  the  far  heights  of  the  Phae- 
drus !  Do  we  then  wonder  at  Plato?  It  is 
because  he  can  paint  for  us  the  remote 
metaphysical  distances  which  lesser  men 
cannot  even  see.  Are  we  dumb  before  a 


CHAPTER 

i 


Cfce  Silences 


CHAPTER 

I 


Beyond  the 
finite 


fdentis,  by 
W.  Compton 
Leith. 


sunset  of  Turner  or  fired  by  a  rhapsody 
of  Emerson  ?  It  is  because  they  give  us 
a  glimpse  of  infinity. 

THIS  longing  for  the  remote,  the  vi 
sionary,  the  transcendental,  is  older 
than  Hellenic  philosophy,  as  old  as  Aryan 
mythology  —  contemporary  with  Zeus 
and  Cronos  and  the  heavenward  specu 
lations  which  gave  them  birth.  It  has  re 
appeared  under  heavy  cloak  or  filmy  garb 
in  the  Fourth  Gospel,  in  the  Vita  Nova, 
in  the  German  mystics,  in  bold  thinkers 
like  Bruno  and  gentle  recluses  like  San 
Juan  de  la  Cruz.  In  one  of  the  noblest 
books  of  recent  days  I  found  it  written 
that  c  Not  Plato's  or  Dante's  creative 
power,  but  truth  surviving  all  incarna 
tions  of  genius  has  kept  this  celestial  gem 
aglow ;  they  have  but  celebrated  that 
which  was  never  mortal,  and  guided  dis 
tracted  eyes  to  heaven's  most  beautiful 
star.'*  Now  in  this  day  when  material 
ism  seems  so  plausible  and  sufficient,  I 
can  still  believe  with  Bruno  that '  man's 
infinite  desire  is  itself  a  pledge  of  its  ful 
fillment  in  an  eternal  life;'  for  though 
there  are  times  when  the  common,  mar 
vellous  beauty  of  a  flower,  or  the  com- 


oftfre 


mon,  marvellous  song  of  a  bird,  will 
lead  us  to  what  seem  like  the  confines 
of  sleep  (so  fully  are  our  senses  gratified 
and  even  sated  with  the  perception  of 
beauty),  yet — has  a  man  ever  in  all 
his  days  been  sated  with  thought  ?  In 
all  Nature's  scheme,  so  far  as  we  know 
it,  there  is  nothing  insatiate  save  the 
mind  ;  and  that,  as  it  would  seem,  is  in 
satiable. 

WE  who  live  to-day  are  a  complex 
folk,  yet  all  our  current  specu 
lation  may  be  traced  to  two  original 
quests  —  of  Nature  and  of  the  super 
natural.  Only  now,  after  many  thousands 
of  years,  are  we  beginning  to  realise  that 
these  two  ideas  are  really  one  —  that 
natural  and  supernatural  are  the  same 
thing  under  different  aspects.  There  can 
be  nothing  above  Nature,  for  there  is 
nothing  outside.  In  speaking  of  Nature 
we  connote  all  existences.  So  it  comes 
about  that  the  rudest  shepherd  who  ever 
cried  to  Arcadian  Pan  was  nearer  to  the 
truth  than  the  mass  of  mankind  to-day. 
We  know  far  more  of  Nature's  ways 
and  means  than  the  Hellene,  yet  we 
understand  her  temperament  less  than 


CHAPTER 

i 


Culture  and 
credulity 


Cbe  Silences 


CHAPTER 
1 


he.  It  is  the  inevitable  bitterness  of  em 
piricism  and  research  that,  as  our  know 
ledge  of  Nature  grows,  our  childish  inti 
macy  with  her  dies  away.  We  lose  sight 
of  her  sweet  womanliness,  the  changing 
moods,  the  merrymaking  and  sorrow; 
we  give  up  the  fair  vision  of  personality; 
we  forget  the  distance  in  poring  over  the 
foreground,  and  despise  generalisations 
because  the  time  is  all  too  short  even 
to  study  the  individual  aspect.  It  is  this 
attitude  which  has  killed  the  nymphs 
and  satyrs ;  let  us  see  that  it  does  not 
kill  the  idea  which  gave  them  birth,  for 
the  idea  was  the  first  gift  of  Nature  to 
the  thought  of  mankind.  Men  sometimes 
are  heard  to  marvel  at  the  credulity 
which  could  people  the  oaks  with  Dry 
ads,  and  see  the  cry  of  mourning  on  the 
petals  of  the  hyacinth.  The  marvel  is 
really  this  —  that  so  long  ago  as  the  age 
of  Hellas,  men  should  have  been  playing, 
like  children,  on  the  threshold  of  wis 
dom,  whereas  we  are  so  far  away.  The 
march  of  science,  the  wane  of  supersti 
tion,  the  ascendancy  of  reason,  have  all 
cleared  our  way  to  Nature;  and  instead 
of  going  to  her  for  a  new  religion  and  a 
new  rule  of  life,  we  try  to  raise  a  second- 


hand  fabric  from  the  rubbish  which  has 
been  moved  from  our  path. 

EVERY  a&  of  a  man's  life,  every 
passion  of  his  body,  every  thought 
of  his  mind,  should  sing  to  Nature  a 
panegyric  that  shall  never  cease;  the 
whole  world  should  be  her  cathedral  of 
perpetual  adoration.  As  Christianity  tells 
us  that  in  violating  one  of  its  ten  com 
mandments  we  violate  the  spirit  of  all, 
so  all  wickedness  should  be,  and,  in  time, 
will  be,  summed  up  in  one  sin  —  the  sin 
ning  against  Nature.  The  righteousness 
which  is  contrary  to  what  is  natural  is 
no  righteousness;  the  piety  which  ignores 
Nature  is  itself  ignored  by  her,  and  will 
presently  perish  of  its  own  vanity.  It  has 
taken  us  countless  centuries  to  find  that 
nature  lay  at  the  root  of  all  religions,  and 
now  that  we  know  it,  we  must  still  spend 
ages  in  spinning  out  of  our  new  ideals  the 
web  of  a  new  religion  which  shall  ex 
clude  nothing  but  what  is  unnatural.  We 
are  to  take  our  lessons  not  from  super- 
civilisation,  but  from  the  fields;  not  from 
Baudelaire,  but  from  the  saga  and  the 
chanson  de  geste.  Men  talk  of  the  noble 
stream  of  progress  and  forget  that  a 


CHAPTER 

i 


Service  and 
freedom 


Back  to 

the  truth 


Cbe  Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 


stream  is  noblest  at  its  source;  at  many 
a  stage  in  history  we  must  return  to  the 
primal  springs  of  inspiration  which  lie 
on  the  horizon  of  thought.  Nor  is  this 
a  reversion  to  barbarism  and  its  crude 
economies ;  it  is  a  regaining  of  the  old 
trail,  a  return  to  the  truth  from  specious 
half-lies,  as  were  also  the  Renascence 
and  the  age  of  the  Pre-Raphaelites,  in 
philosophy  the  age  of  Paracelsus,  in  music 
the  age  of  Wagner.  Though  a  retracing 
of  steps  seems  to  be  implied  when  we 
speak  of  going  back  to  Nature,  there  is 
really  no  retrogression,  but  an  advance; 
and  it  was  necessary  that  we  should  taste 
the  bitterest  dregs  of  civilisation  before 
we  could  be  convinced  of  the  deaden 
ing  effect  of  the  draught.  I  cannot  illus 
trate  this  necessity  more  forcibly  than 
by  quoting  Amiel's  words : '  Comprendre 
les  choses,  c'est  avoir  £t£  dans  les  choses 
puis  en  etre  sorti;  il  y  faut  done  captivit£, 
puis  delivrance,  illusion  et  disillusion, 
enjouement  et  desabusement.  Celui  qui 
est  encore  sous  le  charme  et  celui  qui 
n'a  pas  subi  lecharme  sont  incompetents. 
On  ne  connait  bien  que  ce  qu'on  a  cru 
puis  juge.  Pour  comprendre  il  faut  etre 
libre  et  ne  1'avoir  pas  toujours  £te.  Cela 


of  tfee  ®  oon 


33 


est  vrai,qu'il  soit  question  de  1'amour,  de 
1'art,  de  la  religion,  du  patriotisme.' 

WHEN  summer  goes  hot-cheeked 
on  the  south  wind,  among  all 
her  tricks  of  contrasted  colour  none  is 
of  so  finely  balanced  harmony  as  the 
yellow  corn  with  the  white  butterflies 
breasting  its  waves  and  the  red  poppies 
dipping  beneath  them.  These  poppies 
are  in  some  respects  alien  to  our  occi 
dental  idea  of  beauty.  They  are  eastern 
in  their  pleonasm  of  colour  and  their 
theatrical  airs  ;  they  delight  but  they  do 
not  rest  the  eye.  They  have  none  of  the 
daisy's  '  function  apostolical,'  for  their 
message  is  a  flaming  glory  rather  than 
a  moral;  surely  this  difference  is  not  to 
be  imputed  as  a  shortcoming  to  either  ? 
They  lack  the  tulip's  stately  disdain  and 
the  more  human  queenliness  of  the  rose ; 
their  flaunting  seems  at  first  sight  barely 
to  avoid  vulgarity.  Their  stiff  and  crin 
kled  petals  with  the  absence  of  leafage 
anywhere  near  the  calyx  give  them  an 
appearance  strangely  artificial ;  they  are 
the  most  easily  imitated  of  flowers,  a 
miracle  of  substantial  unreality.  If  we 
compare  the  daisy  to  a  Griselda,  we  may 


CHAPTER 
I 


Poppies 


34 


€6e  Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 


liken  the  poppy  to  Horace's  irresponsible 
Pyrrha, '  simplex munditiis ';  but  such  com 
parison  would  be  purely  superficial,  for 
the  poppy's  character  is  not  read,  as  is 
that  of  some  flowers,  at  a  single  glance. 
Every  flower  has  its  proper  atmosphere, 
its  influence  upon  us  in  calling  up  cer 
tain  distinctive  images  and  associations ; 
and,  like  nearly  all  the  flowers  which 
fable  has  woven  into  its  chaplet  of  song, 
the  poppy  has  a  secondary  significance, 
a  personality  as  well  as  lineaments  ;  of 
this  personality,  elusive,  inconsistent, and 
unforeseen,  mythology  is  the  expression, 
though  not  the  source.  If  the  mimosa  has 
fits  of  shyness  and  the  narcissus  spells 
of  pensive  egoism,  then  it  may  be  said 
that  the  poppy  is  a  creature  of  moods. 
Tossing  defiant  heads  above  the  ground- 
swell  of  the  corn,  they  are  flashes  of 
beauty  in  a  workaday,  utilitarian  world, 
glimpses  such  as  meet  the  city  toiler  in 
a  streak  of  light  in  the  west,  or  such  as 
arrest  him  with  their  visionary  fairness 
at  his  entry  into  a  crowded  gallery  of  art. 
In  the  bright  sunlight  their  expanded 
petals  forget  all  but  their  own  gaiety ; 
a  breath  of  wind  causes  them  almost 
hysterical  flappings.  Under  sunshine  and 


oftbe^oon 


35 


the  world's  admiration  they  are  in  their 
element,  but  theirs  is  a  transient  opti 
mism.  The  approach  of  evening,  a  fall  of 
the  barometer,  the  shade  of  a  tree  travel 
ling  across  their  corner  of  the  cosmos, 
will  close  the  petals  and  change  all  their 
levity  to  gloom  ;  moonlight  shows  them 
as  sullen  fires  in  a  world  by  comparison 
turned  pale.  In  the  very  midst  of  their 
radiance  there  is  something  darkly  omi 
nous  and  sad,  just  as  in  the  middle  of 
each  petal  there  lies  in  some  varieties  a 
stain  of  pitchiest  black.  The  juice  in 
which  Demeter  found  solace  for  her  un 
dying  grief  is  the  juice  of  the  white  poppy 
(papaver  somniferurn),  less  familiar  to  our 
northern  eyes ;  but  if  its  opiate  strength 
is  less,  the  scarlet  flower  with  its  som 
bre  heart  under  folds  of  a  garish  cloak 
has  a  power  over  the  eye  and  imagina 
tion  equalled  by  few  among  plants  of  the 
temperate  zone.  The  tale  of  the  white 
flower  once  created  for  slumber's  sake 
at  the  time  of  autumn  sorrow  has  cast 
its  shadow  upon  its  brighter  sister,  so 
that  both  are  for  ever  latent  in  our  minds 
when  we  think  of  the  sad,  chastened 
figure  of  Demeter.  The  passing  of  Per 
sephone,  queen  of  the  early  year,  type 


CHAPTER. 

I 


Cfre  Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 


Demeter 
of  Knidos 


of  cyclic  birth  and  decay,  becomes  a  vis 
ible  masque  to  eyes  watching  these  gar 
ish  and  frivolous  ephemera  of  the  year's 
high  noon.  At  all  hours  and  seasons  the 
poppy  is  present  in  the  memory  of  man 
as  his  symbol  of  rest ;  but  its  festival 
is  surely  in  the  penumbral  midnights  of 
summer,  for  it  was  then  that  the  busts  of 
Hypnos,  brooding  over  the  silent  streets, 
once  wore  for  their  garlands  these  most 
gorgeous  yet  most  melancholy  of  aesti- 
val  blooms. 

THE  Demeter  of  Knidos  has  al 
ways  been  for  me  the  most  elo 
quent  of  all  the  works  of  Hellenic  art, 
for  in  her  we  seem  to  draw  most  near  to 
the  heart  of  Nature.  We  have  learned, 
and  learned  rightly,  to  look  for  the  no 
blest  expression  of  sorrow  wedded  to 
resignation  in  those  passionless  yet  allu 
sive  features  of  the  Madonna  to  which 
the  clairvoyant  portraiture  of  the  Renas 
cence  gave  a  significance  more  than 
human.  But,  whereas  these  are  the 
work  of  the  children  of  Art,  the  Deme 
ter  is  the  work  of  the  children  of  Na 
ture —  I  had  almost  called  her  an  ema 
nation  of  Nature  herself,  just  as  much 


oft&e 


37 


as  the  olive  and  pomegranate  and  cy 
press  that  lavished  (but  surely  did  not 
waste)  their  beauty  in  her  birthplace  of 
Knidos.  It  is  because  she  is  a  Hellene, 
the  work  of  a  Hellene,  and  therein  closer 
than  medievalism  to  the  mystery  of  Na 
ture,  that  I  take  her  as  the  type  of  that 
deep-hearted  sadness  which  underlies 
earth's  fairest  scenes  and  is  audible  even 
in  her  most  dithyrambic  moods.  It  is  not 
only  on  those  autumn  evenings  when 
we  feel  that  melancholy  is  come  to  hold 
silent  carnival  with  her  votaries,  but  at 
all  times  and  before  all  scenery  the  tones 
of  sorrow  come  home  in  some  degree 
to  the  dullest  sense.  The  very  glad 
ness  of  the  young  year,  when  spring 
comes  faltering  like  an  Oread  over  the 
hills,  has  its  tragic  note,  in  tune  with 
the  half-solved  mystery  of  birth;  sum 
mer's  fulness  is  not  without  foreboding; 
autumn  has  ever  been  the  advent  sea 
son  of  a  spirit  of  gloom.  The  yearly 
masque  of  Persephone's  abduction  and 
return  has  as  deep  a  meaning  for  us  as 
for  the  nameless  sculptor  of  Knidos ;  the 
brooding  figure  that  speaks  of  sorrow's 
dignity  is  no  less  than  a  portrait  of  Na 
ture. 


CHAPTER 

I 


The  Sorrow 
ful  Mother 


€be  Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 

Nature's 
antitypes 


MEN  have  always  thought  of  Na 
ture  as  a  woman;  she  is  Tonan- 
tzi  or  Holda  or  Demeter  or  Bona  Dea. 
Now  the  worship  of  Bona  Dea  prepared 
the  way  for  the  more  beautiful  cult  of  the 
Virgin  protectress  of  crops  and  humble 
toilers  in  the  field,  so  that  this  new  and 
most  radiant  divinity,  the  'sum  of  virtue 
virginal,'  was  welcomed  to  earth  with 
the  eagerness  which  always  attends  the 
re-incarnation  of  a  long  venerated  ideal. 
When,  therefore,  under  the  symbol  of 
a  saint  or  goddess  who  is  benign,  if  also 
sorrowful,  we  offer  allegiance  to  Nature, 
we  are  taking  a  step  which  is  neither 
novel  nor  retrograde.  And  here  let  it 
be  said  that  the  holiness  of  the  saints 
equally  with  the  immortality  of  the  gods 
finds  an  antitype  in  Nature ;  we  must 
go  to  her  if  we  would  learn  justice  and 
purity — justice  free  from  commenta 
ries  and  purity  stripped  of  etiquette.  The 
saint  or  the  martyr  or  the  virgin  is  heart 
to  heart  with  Nature;  though  you  shear 
away  her  golden  hair  and  put  out  the  eyes 
where  celestial  dreams  once  had  their 
lodging,  though  you  fetter  her  hands  that 
never  again  they  may  chase  the  fever  from 
any  brow,  what  have  you  done  after  all  ? 


oftfie 


39 


She  is  still  a  saint  and  all-strong  in  the 
spirit  of  Nature;  you,  I,  the  world,  are 
her  playthings.  It  is  so  with  Nature  her 
self,  the  strong  spirit  whom  man  thinks 
to  have  tamed  ;  he  may  hew  down  her 
trees  for  his  purpose  and  break  her  forces 
to  his  will,  he  may  banish  the  elves  and 
satyrs  to  the  company  of  children  and 
simple  folk,  but  he  cannot  destroy  the 
Idea  which  is  mother  to  elf  and  satyr 
and  all  true  philosophy  and  all  true  song 
—  the  complex  Idea  which  we  with  our 
English  brevity  summarise  in  the  one 
word  —  Nature. 

SYMBOLS  are  the  fairest  blossoms 
of  all  thought,  even  of  philosophical 
thought,  wherein  they  are  exotic ;  they 
are  alien  to  logic,  hand  in  hand  with 
imagination.  We  can  never  dispense 
with  them  any  more  easily  than  we  could 
dispense  with  one  of  our  senses;  life 
without  symbols  would  be  a  language 
without  metaphors.  They  are  the  foun 
dation  of  every  attempt  to  explain  deity 
by  religion  or  philosophy  or  the  arts  ;  they 
lie  at  the  root  of  all  beauty  expressible 
or  inexpressible  by  words.  We  may  talk 
of  ideals,  but  our  words  carry  sense  not 


CHAPTER 

i 


Symbolism 


€be  Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 


before  we  have  reduced  them  to  the 
terms  of  a  symbol.  It  is  obvious  that 
we  cannot  live  save  under  one  or  other 
of  the  potent  spells  of  religion;  worship, 
whether  of  a  God  or  a  Lover  or  an  Ideal, 
is  the  mind's  needed  respite  from  self. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  quasi-religion 
of  Nature  cannot  be  other  than  symbolic, 
that  is,  dependent  upon  symbols  for  its 
realisation;  we  must  find  a  species  of 
personality,  however  ill-defined,  in  that 
which  we  would  approach  as  loving  and 
divine.  So  fierce  is  this  hunger  for  some 
thing  spiritually  tangible,  something  in 
dividual,  upon  which  to  lavish  our  whole 
souls,  that  to  the  lonely  and  disappointed, 
who  have  been  driven  from  the  haunts  of 
men  and  hounded  away  to  the  fields  and 
woods  by  the  ghastly  spectres  of  their 
old  illusions,  the  search  for  a  latent  per 
sonality  in  crude  organic  and  inorganic 
objedts  becomes  the  infinite  reward  of 
past  and  less  and  less  remembered  tribu 
lations  ;  the  flying  pessimist  becomes 
a  learner  in  the  school  of  gratitude,  the 
fool  in  the  world's  eyes  attains  a  grasp 
of  the  truest  wisdom.  For  out  of  this 
personality,  too  shadowy  to  grow  stale, 
too  remote  ever  to  be  stained  with  the 


oftbe  spoon 


41 


dyes  which  poison  and  deface  humanity, 
he  may  draw  out  a  sympathy  the  deeper 
because  it  is  unspoken,  the  more  elo 
quent  in  that  it  cannot  be  wholly  under 
stood.  So  that  although  the  religion  which 
we  seek  may  be  less  a  creed  than  a  com 
radeship,  at  once  tender  and  reverent, 
with  Nature,  it  is  nevertheless  the  one 
possible,  even  satisfying  alternative  for 
the  heart  that  has  vainly  pined  (and  what 
sensitive  heart  has  not?)  to  possess  the 
white  and  Elysian  flowers  of  religion 
without  the  foulness,  clinging  at  their 
roots,  of  dogma,  ignorance,  insanity, 
misbelief.  A  dogma  is  in  its  rudiments 
nothing  more  than  an  encrusted  symbol ; 
it  is  such  crust  of  commentaries  and 
interpretations  which  we  see  fall  away 
in  scales  when  we  go  open-hearted  to 
Nature.  Animism,  the  first  and  the  last 
of  religions,  the  crudest  and  the  most 
delicate,  exerts  its  power  equally  upon 
Wordsworth  and  the  Bushmen,  as  gravi 
tation  does  upon  the  thistle-down  and 
the  boulder  ;  each  interprets  differently 
the  magnetic  pull  which  he  cannot  help 
but  feel,  yet  the  difference  is  in  him,  not 
in  Nature.  The  intermediate  creeds  all 
have  served  to  refine  the  primitive,  not 


CHAPTER 

I 


The  last  of 
the  creeds 


Cfte  Silences 


CHAPTER 

I 


Nihilism  and 
saintship 


to  supersede  it,  and  they  alone  can  see 
the  fair  features  and  sanity  of  animism 
whom  culture  has  taught  to  love  what  is 
natural  j  we  must  study  the  deformities  of 
art  before  we  can  place  even  an  approxi 
mate  value  upon  the  one  form  of  beauty 
utterly  free  from  any  taint  of  the  gro 
tesque,  the  beauty  of  natural  lines  and 
colours. 

WHEN  we  glance  over  the  vaunted 
superiorities  of  man,  this  bom 
bastic  and  sacrosanct  mammal,  and  turn 
our  attention  even  momentarily  to  the 
enormous  content  of  matter  and  the  in 
finite  vistas  of  space  in  respect  of  which 
his  senses  are  helpless  and  his  reason 
delusive,  and  when  we  compare  his  tri 
vial,  homespun  wisdom  with  that  which 
assuredly  he  will  gain  if  the  solar  and 
terrestrial  conditions  remain  favourable 
to  his  race,  the  dawn-streaks  of  the  pre 
sent  with  the  blazing  noonlight  of  the 
future,  then  we  naturally  fall  to  wonder 
ing  how  such  names  as  atheist  and  dog 
matist,  materialist  and  spiritualist,  can  be 
deemed  indispensable  words  among  men 
and  women  even  of  the  veriest  simplicity 
and  of  an  education  the  most  superficial, 


43 


without  provoking  the  same  tolerant 
smile  which  meets  now  those  once  so 
fascinating  sciences  (fascinating,  because 
at  least  they  were  lavish  in  promise,  if 
not  always  lofty  in  ideal),  the  knowledge 
of  alchemy  and  enchantment,  or  the 
childish  wisdom  of  astrology,  that  bor 
derland  of  the  ridiculous  and  the  sub 
lime. 

ATHEISM  and  spiritualism,  though 
as  names  they  are  continually  on 
our  lips,  as  ideas  are  equally  antiquated 
with  any  such  errors  of  science  in  the 
past ;  and  of  the  many  philosophical 
quackeries  and  fashions  none  is  less  phi 
losophical  and  more  difficult  to  hear 
without  impatience  than  the  arrogant  de 
nial  of  all  imperceptible  existence.  We 
say  that  there  is  no  God,  when  the  ut 
most  that  we  are  rationally  entitled  to 
say  is  that  the  human  faculties  in  their 
present  condition  are  incapable  of  form 
ing  a  reasonable  conception  of  God.  We 
say  that  man  has  no  soul,  when  we  are 
only  justified  in  saying  that  the  mental 
or  psychic  functions  are  not,  as  we  once 
imagined,  to  be  differentiated  from  other 
branches  of  our  physiological  activity. 


CHAPTER 

i 


The  futility 
of  negations 


44 


C6e  Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 


Natural 
sanftity 


The  almost  inconceivable  capacity  which 
the  human  brain  may  yet  reach  forbids 
us  to  deny  the  possibility  of  any  devel 
opment.  Man  is  potentially  —  anything ! 
We  must  be  ready,  therefore,  to  believe 
anything  concerning  his  future  which 
the  past  has  not  refuted;  the  future  must 
find  us  all-credulous.  At  the  same  time 
we  shall  believe  nothing  which  the  laws 
of  evidence  show  to  be  not  proven  ;  we 
shall  not  trust  the  wisdom  of  the  present; 
we  must  stand  forth  as  passive  nihilists, 
craving  the  union  (still  vulgarly  despised 
as  an  immorality)  of  nihilism  and  saint- 
ship —  but  not  the  saintship  of  rosaries 
and  chaunted  myth.  For  we  do  not  al 
ways  remember  that  there  is  a  sanctity 
essential  to  Nature  as  well  as  the  sanc 
tity  derived  from  creeds;  among  beasts 
and  flowers,  who  nestle  close  to  Nature, 
is  to  be  found  neither  conscious  foulness, 
nor  dishonesty,  nor  broken  vows ;  the 
cynical  or  the  obscene  point  of  view  is 
not  possible  to  one  who  lives  intelligently 
among  these  beasts  and  plants  and  trees; 
vulgarity  is  utterly  alien  to  all  organic 
existence  save  man.  It  is  undeniable  that 
the  saintly  ideal  is  of  all  the  most  grace 
ful,  the  most  delicate,  a  lily  among  ideals ; 


oftbe^oon 


45 


we  cannot  look  unmoved  upon  its  tight 
hand-clasp  of  purity,  its  rapture  wrung 
from  suffering,  its  faith  plainly  to  be 
read  in  eyes  glassing  eternity.  The  cause 
which  was  mother  to  the  Paradiso  and 
the  De  Imitatione  Christi,  which  has  made 
heroes  of  the  earth's  offscourings,  and 
which  could  bring  Cynewulf  to  dream 
the  Dream  of  the  Rood,  has  shown  us 
that  the  desire  for  sanctity  is  inherent  in 
the  human  race,  has  shown  us  to  what 
heights,  higher  than  snow-clad,  the  will 
unsupported  by  reason  may  rise.  Grant 
to  this  faithful  and  masterful  will,  not 
yet  proof  against  the  foolish  knaveries 
and  knavish  fooleries  which  we  call  sin, 
the  eyes  open  to  see  upon  what  a  base, 
broadening  to  infinity,  the  desire  of  sanc 
tity  has  been  placed,  with  what  tender 
ness  it  has  been  cherished  by  Nature 
among  her  pet  children  (for  is  not  this 
the  lesson  which  we  learn  from  Saint 
Francis  among  his  birds  and  flowers  ?), 
and  how  the  fairest  creed  is  only  a  cup 
of  cold  water  to  leave  us  the  more  madly 
thirsting — and  man  shall  sow  the  seeds 
of  a  new  saintship  beside  which  the  ho 
liness  of  the  Fathers  shall  seem  paro 
chial.  The  workaday  piety  of  the  Puritan, 


CHAPTER 
I 


Christianity, 

the  world's 

loveliest 

phase — 

hitherto 


Cbe 


CHAPTER 
I 


The  making 
of  Man 


though  we  may  ever  learn  from  him  his 
disdain  of  misnamed  realities,  cannot  fail 
ultimately  to  become  a  sounding  cym 
bal,  as  must  all  religions  founded  upon 
a  principle  foreign  to  Nature's  scheme ; 
the  passionate  orisons  of  the  darlings  of 
Christ,  though  they  are  born  of  a  love  so 
fiery  as  to  blind  the  eyes  of  such  as  ap 
proach  through  curiosity  and  unguarded 
by  reverence,  must  flicker  and  fail  in  the 
presence  of  perennial  laws — laws  of  as 
tronomy,  of  biology,  of  geology,  of  chem 
istry.  The  men  and  women  who  walked 
apart  from  Nature  because  they  seemed 
to  detedt  guile  in  the  rose's  heart  and 
desire  in  the  pleading  of  the  nightingale 
have  loved  and  died  almost  in  vain,  for 
their  lavish  passion  went  to  crown  an 
abstraction  and  their  martyrdom  only 
confirmed  a  mistaken  belief.  We  are 
tempted  to  think,  perhaps,  if  this  is  so, 
what  a  tragedy !  what  irony,  more  biting 
than  Sophoclean !  But  there  is  no  tragedy, 
though  the  irony  is  perceptible  which  is 
eternally  attendant  upon  organic  exist 
ence  ;  for  out  of  the  generations  nour 
ished  upon  Christ  conies  the  ardent  mar 
tyr-spirit,  careless  of  pain ;  from  the  trust 
in  an  almighty  being  who  was  before  the 


oftije^oon 


47 


worlds  comes  the  faith  in  a  nature-of- 
things  essentially  and  ultimately  wise, 
even  if  fortuitously;  from  the  icy  asceti 
cism,  spotless  in  a  not  exemplary  age, 
comes  the  power  to  see  purity  inherent 
in  all  living  things.  Without  this  clear 
ing  of  the  cumbered  ground,  this  laying 
down  of  smooth  roads  for  the  wayfaring 
soul,  the  birth  of  the  wooers  of  Nature 
had  been  postponed  for  centuries ;  we 
owe  our  close  and  earnest  comradeship 
with  all  visible  beauty  to  Christianity 
as  well  as  to  Hellas,  for  if  the  latter 
showed  us  the  fairness  of  the  human 
form,  the  former  told  us  by  what  means 
it  is  made  fair.  We,  therefore,  to  whom 
history  and  science  have  become  so  pro 
pitious,  need  make  no  flight  to  a  far  and 
supersensuous  beauty,  nor  build  ephem 
eral  shrines  and  temples  on  the  sands  of 
a  dream,  nor  pile  rubric  on  statute  for 
the  better  storming  of  an  impregnable 
heaven  :  for  since  we  see  both  the  sen 
suous  and  the  supersensuous  to  be  fair 
and  persuasive  and  hold  them  both  sa 
cred,  we  shall  go  back  to  the  groves  for 
our  worship  and  chaunt  our  human  stro 
phe  and  antistrophe  of  sorrow  and  joy 
under  aisles  unbuilt  by  human  hands,  in 


CHAPTER 

I 


Cbe  Silences 


CHAPTER 

I 


'There  is  no 
saint  like  the 
sky,  sunlight 
shining  from 
its  face' 


an  oratory  whose  sights  and  sounds  and 
fragrance  bring  us  a  sympathy  or  com 
passion  (in  the  most  literal  meaning  of 
the  words)  passing  the  charity  of  men. 
But  though  we  fly  to  the  groves,  it  is  not 
to  bow  down  to  an  Astarte;  the  purity  of 
Nature,  pervading  and  inherent  in  us  all, 
is  our  safeguard  against  her  too  cogent 
appeal  to  our  senses,  and  if  she  entices 
us  to  excess,  it  is  that  we  may  gain  the 
strength  of  a  vanquished  temptation. 

THE  cries  of  frenzied  communities 
over  their  barterings  and  supersti 
tions  and  strife  are  a  hum  in  our  ears 
long  after  we  have  cast  their  objects 
adrift.  It  is  impossible  to  attain  at  a  leap 
a  detachment  from  futilities  which  the 
accumulated  wealth  of  ages  has  sanc 
tioned  ;  we  have  done  well  if  at  the  end 
of  a  long  life  we  have  cast  away  a  sin 
gle  one  of  the  stiff  and  faded  cerements 
in  which  each  of  us  is  wrapped  (strange 
irony  of  convention!)  on  his  entry  into 
the  world.  For  though  at  last  we  may 
tear  away,  not  without  pain,  one  or  two 
of  these  entrammelling  garments,  others 
are  left  still  to  be  torn  away;  if  the  shroud 
of  the  delusion  of  religious  dogma  must 


oftbe  spoon 


49 


soon  be  cast  off,  it  is  not  always  followed 
by  the  shroud  of  the  delusion  of  etiquette, 
of  wealth,  of  nobility  foolishly  so  called. 
Our  eidola  are  no  fewer  now  than  they 
were  when  Bacon  smiled  gravely  over 
their  vanity  ;  but  they  are  more  subtle, 
highly  developed,  and  elusive;  they  can 
be  destroyed  only  by  years  of  intimacy 
with  the  wisdom  of  visible  fa<5ts  and 
beauties.  So  that  if  at  first  we  find  none 
of  the  comfort  in  tangible  things  which 
we  were  used  to  find  in  abstractions,  we 
must  try  not  to  despair  or  call  Nature 
morose.  Though  the  temperament  which 
craves  for  Christianity  also  craves  for 
sympathy,  yet  in  a  while  we  find  it  in 
the  gaze  of  flowers  and  the  tender  side 
long  glances  of  birds  ;  later  on,  peculiar 
affinities  are  merged  in  the  general  good 
will,  and  we  take  Nature  a  willing  lover 
into  our  arms.  Years  may  elapse  (for 
banished  Christianity  leaves  more  than 
a  momentary  hiatus)  before  we  are  drawn 
close  to  the  symbolic  spirit  of  Nature  by 
that  same  reciprocal  ardency  of  passion 
which  we  knew  in  the  symbolic  Christ ; 
but  it  is  given  us  to  be  freed  almost  imme 
diately  from  the  dulness  of  sense  which 
in  a  bird's  song  can  hear  nothing  but  a 


CHAPTER 
I 


Iconoclasm 


The  theoretic 
faculty 


5° 


CHAPTER 
I 


Steadfastness 
under  change 


bird  singing ;  it  is  given  us  to  know  the 
cradle  of  the  Gods,  to  pass  beyond  the 
Propylaeum  with  its  thousand  caryatid 
mythologies  into  the  fane  of  the  great 
mother  alike  of  god  and  myth.  Knowing 
how  to  detecl:  the  true  and  the  false,  we 
shall  run  no  risk  of  grasping  at  shadows 
instead  of  substance ;  placing  no  value 
upon  superstition,  we  shall  yet  have  the 
senses  able  and  quick  to  see  the  alal  upon 
the  curly  hyacinth,  or  to  hear  Thor's 
hammer  and  the  tears  of  the  sorrowful 
mother  of  Baldur  in  the  boom  and  wail 
ing  of  the  northeast  wind.  The  way  to  a 
new  religion  lies  ever  through  the  old ;  we 
pass  the  landmarks  of  vanished  beliefs  at 
every  step  on  our  way  to  the  parent  creed 
—  landmarks  which,  in  so  far  as  they  are 
true  attempts  to  visualise  the  spirit  of 
Nature,  we  shall  build  into  the  fabric  of 
our  new  life. 

IN  time  Nature  lets  us  into  the  secret 
of  what  we  had  been  pleased  to  call 
her  caprices  —  womanly  caprices.  Slan 
dered  Nature  !  Slandered  womankind  ! 
When  shall  we  learn  that,  as  caprices 
are  traits  the  least  admirable  and,  there 
fore,  the  least  characteristic  of  woman- 


of  t&e  spoon 


51 


hood,  so  wanton  changefulness  is  in 
Nature  the  quality  most  rarely  found, 
most  foreign  to  her  serenity?  We  find 
ourselves  referring  to  her,  as  we  learn 
more  and  more  of  her  marvellous  ways, 
the  '  character  of  large-browed  steadfast 
ness  '  which  is  never  absent  in  the  best 
of  women.  Watch  her  spirit  in  the  con 
templative  idleness  of  the  cirrus  and  in 
the  energy  of  the  flying  scud ;  in  the 
rise  and  fall  of  the  wheatfield,  a  heaving 
bosom  beneath  cloth  of  gold ;  in  the 
throat-curve  of  a  Mary  lily,  the  flower 
which  is  sacredly  luminous  at  darkest 
night ;  in  the  hills,  which  always  seem 
remote,  even  when  you  stand  upon  their 
summits.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  her 
in  moods  more  diverse,  in  attitudes  more 
individually  symbolic  ;  but  she  may  be 
seen  under  thousand  forms  and  colours 
whenever  we  wish  —  in  the  hedgerow, 
in  the  garden,  in  the  sky,  and  every  time 
we  look  out  of  a  window.  Now  this  very 
diversity  is  the  cloak  of  deepest  steadfast 
ness,  the  play  of  smile  and  changing  ex 
pression  over  changeless  features  :  under 
all  variation  and  apparent  divergence 
from  purpose  there  is  the  same  pertina 
city.  For  every  divergence  is  but  an  off- 


CHAPTER 

i 


€&e  Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 


The 

evolution  of 
the  perfect 


shoot  of  Nature  in  search  of  some  new 
development  of  beauty;  the  branches 
feel  their  way  outwards,  but  the  growth 
of  the  tree  is  eternally  upwards.  See  the 
countless  religions  which  have  sprouted 
from  the  central  idea  of  a  self-existent 
guiding  power  (a  God,  as  we  used  to  say) : 
trace  them  in  the  ascending  scale  from 
animism  through  Plato  to  Spinoza :  has 
not  the  strife  been  not  merely  expansion, 
but  an  everlasting  ascent?  There  remains 
the  further  climb  to  a  wise  and  purified 
animism  which  is  the  perception  of  an 
eternal  progress  behind  the  parable  of 
temporal  things  j  it  is  this  meaning  which 
brings  animism  into  line  with  every  noble 
creed  of  this  and  other  days  by  showing 
the  ideal  trivialities  of  the  world  to  be  its 
only  realities,  and  the  things  to  which  it 
attaches  so  much  importance  to  be  the 
scrannel  trinkets  deified  by  a  social  in 
telligence  less  than  puerile.  But  whereas 
the  ascetic  ideals  of  the  past  have  always 
laid  natural  impulse  under  a  ban,  and 
generally  natural  beauty  also,  it  is  the 
glory  of  Nature's  own  asceticism  that  it 
is  built  upon  those  very  foundations 
which  a  rudimentary  knowledge  of  man 
and  his  relation  to  the  universe  rejected 


53 


as  treacherous.  We  no  longer  walk  in 
the  earth's  garden  with  closed  senses; 
our  whole  life  is  a  seeing,  a  hearing,  an 
understanding,  and  a  helping  of  others 
to  see,  hear,  and  understand  likewise. 
There  is  less  play  for  the  emotions  be 
cause  we  have  destroyed  hysterical  reli 
gion  ;  there  is  more  play  for  the  emotions 
because  we  have  become  keener  of  sense. 
Future  religion  will  be  neither  of  reason 
nor  of  emotion,  but  of  a  sanity  which 
includes  both,  knowing  them  not  to  be 
contradictory. 

THE  beginning  and  end,  the  cause 
and  effecl:,  of  all  worship  is  the  out 
pouring  of  a  mind  to  that  which  is  beau 
tiful  like  itself :  so  that,  when  I  speak 
of  worshipping  a  flower,  I  mean  just  as 
much  and  just  as  little  as  when  I  speak 
of  worshipping  a  God.  Call  this  Beauty, 
universally  immanent,  by  what  name  we 
will,  Eros,  or  Nature,  or  World-Spirit, 
or  Christ,  we  must  needs  yield  to  it  all 
honour  and  devotion,  either  mediately 
through  the  passion  of  human  love,  or 
immediately,  as  is  the  lot  of  some  few 
who  are  unloved,  and  therein  both  for 
tunate  and  sorrowful :  in  such  case  have 


CHAPTER 

i 


Worship, 

or  the 
perception 
of  Beauty 


54 


€J)e  Silences 


CHAPTER 
I 


Justice 


been  hermits  and  Nazarites  and  seers  of 
every  country  and  age.  As  earthly  love 
may  be  a  prelude  to  the  love  of  the  bright 
abstractions  of  thought  which  men  called 
Gods,  so  it  may  swell  from  these  thin 
nest  pipings  to  the  complex  music  which 
is  knowledge  and  love  of  Nature.  When, 
one  after  another,  the  tokens  of  her  ten 
derness  are  discovered,  clasped  uncon 
sciously  in  our  own  hands,  then  our  love- 
song  begins  to  grow,  as  it  were,  orches 
tral  ;  we  become  aware  of  harmonies 
hitherto  undreamed ;  what  was  a  ditty  is 
expanding  into  an  overture. 

BUT  a  man  foul-minded  or  malevo 
lent  is  the  laughing-stock  of  Nature, 
though  he  rule  continents.  If  the  king  to 
whom  you  are  asked  to  do  servile  obei 
sance  plays  the  gallant  or  the  toss-pot, 
his  crown  is  a  fool's  cap;  you  may  hear 
the  same  healthful,  derisive  laughter  of 
the  Gods  as  greeted  the  snaring  of  Ares 
and  Aphrodite  in  the  net  of  Hephaestus. 
Nature  is  the  eternal  source  of  what  we 
call  poetical  justice.  In  the  end  the  op 
pressor  is  always  worsted  and  the  injured 
cause  set  right.  Collectively  there  has 
never  been  any  such  thing  as  injustice, 


55 


nor  the  necessity  for  any  such  thing  as 
law ;  in  sum  every  acl:  is  balanced  by  its 
consequence,  every  flicker  of  thought 
works  out  its  own  punishment  or  reward. 
Adi:  and  consequence  are  as  indissoluble 
as  subject  and  predicate;  though  the  con 
sequence  of  our  thought  at  this  moment 
may  be  as  a  dry  grain  of  wheat  for  a  few 
thousand  years,  it  will  one  day  bear  its 
stalk  of  golden  corn :  as  there  is  nothing 
unrequited,  so  there  is  nothing  trivial 
and  unimportant.  The  existence  of  such 
words  as'  injustice '  is  a  blasphemy  against 
the  holy  spirit  of  Nature ;  it  should  be 
blotted  out  of  a  language  along  with  its 
hideous  kindred — 'illegal,'  and  'sinful,' 
and  'unfair.'  Never  do  things  prey  upon 
each  other  save  in  everlasting  orbits;  man 
destroys  the  proudest  beasts  of  the  forests 
and  himself  falls  a  prey  to  comparatively 
ignoble  forms  of  life  which  are,  perhaps, 
ultra-microscopic.  One  plant  is  robbed 
of  its  sweetness  by  the  insect, and  another 
snares  the  insect  for  its  food.  Neither  in 
the  past  nor  the  present  is  there  such  a 
thing  as  a  wrong  unrequited  in  its  due 
proportion. 


CHAPTER 

i 


€6e  Silences 


CHAPTER 
i 


The  progress 

from 
pessimism  — 


MILLET  said:  'One  is  never  so 
Greek  as  in  painting  naively 
one's  own  impressions,  no  matter  where 
they  were  received.'  I  have  tried  here  on 
long  summer  evenings  to  paint  my  im 
pressions  of  the  coy  and  reticent  spirit  of 
Nature,  who  in  all  ages  has  shown  herself 
veiled  and  in  briefest  glimpses  to  man: 
who  planted  in  him  the  instindt  of  ani 
mism  and  faery  lore;  who  by  her  hints 
of  dormant  personality  led  him  to  dream 
of  her  and  call  her  divine,  and  brought  to 
the  birth  in  his  mind  such  fair  offspring 
as  the  stories  of  Brynhild,  or  the  Sweet 
Briar  Rose, or  Hyacinthus,or  Syrinx  flee 
ing  from  the  arms  of  Pan. 


II 

I  SUPPOSE  it  must  be  granted  that 
pessimism  is  generally  plausible,  nay, 
at  first  sight  full  of  conviction.  We  seem 
to  be  so  tantalised  and  perpetually  be 
trayed  ;  our  fairest  flowers  of  hope  are 
blighted,  the  harvest  of  our  a£ts  is  all  too 
mean.  We  find  so  much  that  is  univer 
sally  applicable  in  the  gloomy  myths  of 
Daedalus  and  Niobe  and  Faust,  so  little 


oftfce^oon 


57 


in  the  reassuring  myths  of  the  Golden 
Fleece,  of  Odysseus'  return,  and  of  the 
achieving  of  the  San  Graal ;  such  truth 
in  the  irony  of  Sophocles,  such  blindness 
in  the  optimism  of  Browning.  There  is 
the  quintessence  of  melancholy  in  Hera- 
clitus'  brief  summary  of  philosophy — 
'Nothing  pauses:  all  things  flow;'  and, 
viewed  from  one  standpoint,  there  is 
the  same  sadness  in  every  change  of  or 
ganic  life.  If  we  are  momentarily  buoyed 
up  by  a  glimpse  of  earthly  beauty  or  an 
intuition  of  spiritual  delight,  if  we  are 
borne  away  on  the  gtary  of  starlight  or  of 
high  speculative  thofught,  it  is  only  to  be 
cast  down  again  as  suddenly  as  we  seem 
to  fall  in  a  dream.  As  in  a  dream,  too,  our 
vision,  however  deliriously  sweet,  has 
always  some  bitterness,  even  if  it  be  only 
in  the  awakening. 

YET  eventually  it  becomes  plain, 
though  nothing  but  time  and  growth 
will  make  it  so,  that  this  idea  of  ours  is 
no  more  than  superficial.  The  sullen  grey 
of  stormy  waves  (the  cunharvested  sea' 
to  the  landlubber,  but  not  to  the  fisher 
men  or  the  pearl-divers)  conceals  form  and 
colour  and  infinite  miracle  beneath  :  it 


CHAPTER 
II 


—  through 
Nature  — 


CHAPTER 
II 


is  so  with  all  existence.  There  is  unity  in 
those  flashes  of  confidence  which  seem 
unrelated  and  parenthetical;  they  are 
like  the  islands  apparently  sown  broad 
cast  in  the  ocean,  really  the  peaks  of  a 
hidden  mountain  range.  Their  connec 
tion  is  only  submerged  ;  their  apparent 
irrelation  incites  us  to  prove  them  related. 
The  fa&  that  they  are  momentary  and 
infrequent  shows  them  to  be  precious ; 
they  follow  the  law  of  farseeing  Nature 
which  says,You  shall  have  but  few  saints 
in  a  century,  and  they  shall  have  but  few 
rhapsodies  in  a  life.  As  the  ideal  of  saint- 
ship  has  never  died,  knows  neither  Time 
nor  Space,  but  keeps  reappearing  as  a 
thread  of  gold  in  the  immense  tapestry  of 
history,  so  it  must  be  with  everything  of 
tried  and  enduring  value.  The  apparent 
evanescence  of  such  conceptions  is  in 
inverse  ratio  to  their  durability.  Thus  the 
ideas  of  patriotism,  self-denial,  temper 
ance,  chastity,  wax  and  wane  and  leave 
their  periods  marked  on  the  world's  story 
as  clearly  as  ripples  on  a  sandy  shore. 
Aristippus  of  Cyrene,  or  the  Encyclo 
paedists,  or  the  modern  philosophy  of 
Egoism  may  seem  to  banish  them,  but 
the  more  total  their  disappearance,  the 


of  tbe  spoon 


59 


more  certain  is  their  return.  The  friend 
ship  of  men  and  of  women,  the  love  of 
man  and  woman,  the  devotion,  annihi 
lating  self,  to  country  or  conviction,  the 
centripetal  flight  of  the  human  mind  to 
her  or  him  who  is  called  Nature  and  God 
—  every  radiance  of  ideal  purity  and 
every  grandeur  of  ideal  self-sacrifice  — 
all  these  are  too  real  to  be  temporal,  too 
transient  not  to  be  immortal. 

YOU  remember  Kingsley's  saying  in 
that  most  wonderful  of  all  his 
books,  the  Water  Babies,  that  ca  game 
keeper  is  only  a  poacher  turned  inside 
out '  ?  So  we  find  with  our  pessimistic 
view  :  turn  it  inside  out,  and  it  is  found  to 
be  optimism  after  all !  We  must  be  dole 
ful  as  long  as  we  see  only  the  tops  of 
the  islands  instead  of  their  roots  in  the 
depth  of  the  sea.  A  dilettante  philosophy 
is  never  to  be  trusted,  and  it  is  either 
muddily  pessimistic  or  the  shallowest 
optimism ;  if  we  make  our  philosophy  the 
first  question  of  life,  it  will  always  be 
found  confident  and  scornful  of  despair. 
After  all,  the  great  test  question  for 
every  philosophy  is,  How  does  it  come 
into  line  with  Nature  ?  She  is  the  canon 


CHAPTER 

ii 


optimism 


6o 


C6e  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


Ecle&icism 


of  all  arts  and  dogmas,  the  focus  of  all 
thought :  let  us  take  our  creed  to  the  hills 
and  the  running  streams,  and  lay  its  puny 
half-truths  beside  the  austerity  of  the  one 
and  the  low-crooned  cradle-song  of  the 
other,  so  that,  if  it  is  a  pure  creed,  it  may 
expand  into  a  possession  worth  dying  for, 
and,  if  so,  worth  living  for  also. 

WE  hear  the  materialist  tell  us  that 
the  tangible  is  all-inclusive;  and 
we  hear  the  Christian  saying  that  this 
world  is  but  a  shadow  of  the  true  sub 
stance.  We  may  learn  from  both;  from 
the  one  his  wisdom  of  living  the  hour 
for  the  hour's  sake,  from  the  other  his 
intellectual  beauty  and  his  fair  ideal.  But 
let  us  beware  of  devotion  to  either;  for 
have  we  not  given  the  whole  heart  to 
Nature,  who  understands  no  treachery  ? 
We  must  not  see  with  the  materialist, 
for  to  him  Nature  means  no  more  than 
an  apotheosis  of  protoplasm,  nor  with 
the  Christians,  for  they  hold  their  dogma 
to  be  higher  than  Nature's  laws.  If  our 
guides  are  chosen  from  either  of  these, 
we  are  to  follow  them  blindfold,  lest  a 
greater  beauty  than  they  can  offer  should 
draw  us  away.  Surely  this  is  to  become 


oftbe  epoon 


61 


pilgrims  of  a  darker  night  than  ever  we 
deemed  at  setting  out?  Yet  there  is  not 
a  creed  nor  an  enthusiasm  that  cannot 
teach  us  something.  The  dervish  and  the 
fakir  teach  us  their  indifference  to  the 
moment's  life  or  its  pains,  the  saint  his 
thaumaturgy  of  faith  making  visible  a 
beauty  beyond  mortal  sight.  We  have 
come  here  on  earth  to  learn;  our  philoso 
phy  must  be  a  world-wide  eclecticism. 
Past  eclectics  have  compiled  their  systems 
from  human  philosophies;  our  wisdom 
will  include  the  philosophy  of  the  moun 
tains  and  streams;  what  these  stand  for 
we  shall  aim  at — their  strength  and  pa 
tience,  their  striving  towards  one  end, 
namely,  the  symmetry  of  things  organic 
and  inorganic. 

DOES  it  not  seem  incredible  thateven 
one  of  all  the  striving  and  brow 
beaten  souls  at  war  on  this  earth  should 
have  its  beginning  and  end  in  a  short 
cycle  of  years  or  centuries?  Yet  hundreds 
of  wise  men  and  books  tell  me  that  I  have 
only  just  come  into  existence,  that  my 
age  can  be  reckoned  in  orbits  of  the  earth 
and  phases  of  the  moon.  I  ask  them  how 
they  know  that  I  did  not  exist  when  the 


CHAPTER 
II 


Time  and 
mortality 


62 


Cfje  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


The  paths  of 
Beauty 


earth  was  a  gaseous  vortex,  and  they 
laugh  pitifully.  But  their  laughter  does 
not  explain  anything.  Meanwhile  I  am 
assured  by  my  longings  which  nothing 
transient  or  mortal  can  assuage,  by  the 
lives  of  men  to  whom  temporal  honours 
are  almost  unendurable,  by  the  friend 
ship  which  shall  laugh  at  death,  that  no 
man,  unless  he  desires  it,  is  of  a  race 
merely  earthly :  I  am  not,  as  that  all- 
sufficing  materialism  will  tell  me,  haled 
up  from  deep-sea  silence  into  the  shout 
ing  turmoil  of  breakers,  and  flung  back, 
a  sinking  relic,  with  the  next  ebb-tide. 
A  man  may  prate  to  me  of  apes  and 
evolution,  but  he  is  telling  me  no  great 
marvel;  let  him  show  me  the  perspective 
beyond  evolution,  and  I  will  be  his  slave. 

THE  noblest  heroisms,  epics,  tran 
scendentalisms,  are  only  bubbles  in 
the  broad  wake  of  destiny ;  yet  what  love 
liness  they  have,  what  colours,  what — 
in  the  most  literal  sense  of  the  word — 
what  an  iridescence !  and  each  of  them 
reflects  the  whole  world.  For  there  is 
one  meaning  alike  in  the  voyages  of  Co 
lumbus  and  the  quest  of  the  San  Graal; 
there  is  one  compelling  power  in  modern 


oftbe^oon 


science  and  in  the  search  for  the  phi 
losopher's  stone.  Dante  and  Omar  sang 
no  different  songs ;  Napoleon  and  Saint 
Francis  of  Assisi  trod  the  same  path  only 
to  a  different  measure  —  the  one  iron- 
shod,  the  other  shuffling  along  barefoot. 
What,  then,  means  this  warfare  of  Christ 
with  Mahomet,  of  Reason  with  Faith, 
of  Baron  with  Peasant  ?  There  is  no 
royal  road  to  the  true  and  the  beauti 
ful;  there  are  but  innumerable  bypaths, 
over  the  mountain,  where  the  hermit  has 
beaten  a  track  in  the  snow,  under  the 
trees,  where  Nature  sits  writing  her  pas 
torals — all  leading  to  one  end — rather, 
all  leading  in  the  same  direction  towards 
an  unattainable,  because  infinite,  perfec 
tion.  By  every  creed  and  by  every  nega 
tion,  by  peace  and  strife,  by  enthusiasms 
and  cynicisms,  by  hymns  to  Dahana,  the 
rosy-fingered,  and  to  Mary,  the  'woman 
clothed  with  the  Sun,  and  the  Moon 
under  her  feet,  and  upon  her  head  a  crown 
of  twelve  stars,'  man  has  drawn  nearer 
to  the  face  of  beauty  and  the  quickening 
heart  of  truth.  Let  a  man  have  his  fetish, 
if  he  will ;  let  him  bow  down  to  it,  though 
it  be  a  Priapus:  for  out  of  the  inevitable 
satiety  which  awaits  him  whose  Gods  are 


CHAPTER 
II 


Cfre  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


The  failure 
of  aesthetic 


born  not  of  his  higher  but  of  his  lower 
nature  will  come  forth  an  acuter  hear 
ing,  a  vision  more  delicate,  a  wider  de 
sire.  We  who  live  to-day,  we  who  have 
seen  monarchy  spurn  democracy  and 
democracy  trample  on  kings,  who  have 
watched  invention  added  to  invention, 
and  creed  superimposed  upon  creed — 
we  can  see  that  the  trend  of  history  is 
always  forward,  that  the  strongest  back 
water  is  part  of  the  stream. 

NOW  those  who  have  drunk  of  the 
elixir  of  Plotinus  know  his  saying 
that  every  beauty  has  its  shaping  and 
perfecting  soul.  They  know  that  apart 
from  a  soul  noble  and,  as  it  were,  high 
born  there  can  be  no  enduring  beauty 
—  so  that  we  must  see  many  genera 
tions  of  pure  and  noble  ancestry  pass 
away  before  we  reach  beauty  either  of 
intellect  or  of  body  :  and  that  in  beauty 
something  lies  beyond  what  the  eye  can 
see  and  the  tongue  can  speak  of.  It  is 
this  something  beyond,  common  to  all 
beautiful  trees  and  flowers  and  grasses 
and  rocks  and  animals,  which  gives  them 
their  form,  draws  us  to  them,  makes  us 
their  kin.  If  not  this,  what  is  it  that  gives 


of  tfjc  Q300U 


them  their  hold  upon  us  ?  What  is  their 
magic  ?  It  is  not  symmetry,  as  has  often 
been  alleged  and  disproved ;  certainly  it 
is  nothing  fortuitous.  I  love  the  spruce 
and  the  poplar;  I  would  spend  countless 
lives  in  watching  them  in  wind  and  rain 
and  sun,  at  twilight  and  at  midday. 
Symmetry,  you  say?  Perspective  acting 
as  a  narcotic  on  the  eye?  I  have  as  strong 
a  love  for  the  yew :  is  that,  too,  born  of 
symmetry  ?  And  as  to  what  corresponds 
to  symmetry  in  colour,  is  that  always 
beautiful?  In  the  end  we  must  admit 
something  utterly  irreducible  to  terms ; 
beauty  is  still c#,'  the  unknown,  the  all- 
important,  tangible  to  some  degree  in 
material  things,  but  most  of  all  in  the 
word  and  deed  of  her  worshippers.  For 
the  noble  men  and  true  women  of  whom 
we  read  and  dream  hold  us  solely  by 
reason  of  their  being  each  a  facet  to  catch 
one  or  another  of  the  lights  of  beauty ; 
as,  this  one  the  steadfastness,  that  one 
the  striving,  and  this  one  again  the  calm. 
Yet  it  seems  sometimes  that  when  we 
have  gone  as  pilgrims  to  this  and  that 
human  shrine  of  beauty,  to  the  mind  of 
Pythagoras,  Plato,  Plotinus  —  to  poets 
in  words,  to  poets  in  form  and  colour, 


CHAPTER 
II 


66 


Cbe  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


Beauty  and 
self-rule 


and  to  the  saints,  who  are  poets  in  a& — 
and  when  in  place  of  that  rare  delight 
under  whose  faintest  shadow  we  have 
not  failed  to  weep  and  tremble  we  find 
sketches  ruder  than  the  scratchings  of  the 
cave-dweller  on  his  wall,  we  feel  some 
thing  of  the  barrenness  which  stretches 
across  the  world  for  the  bereaved  lover. 
Quomodo  sedet  sola  Civitasf 

BUT  then  by  that  fortunate  irony 
which  makes  known  to  us  the  ful 
ness  of  our  adoration  only  when  the 
Beloved  is  taken  away,  we  draw  nearer 
to  what  seems  to  be  eternally  lost.  In  a 
desperate  and  auspicious  hour  we  learn 
to  look  at  beauty  in  the  chastened  spirit 
required  of  her  stainless  knights ;  we  have 
been  schooled  in  her  laws  of  chivalry ; 
we  know  at  last  that  the  mere  dying  with 
her  name  on  our  lips  is  a  destiny  glori 
ously  fulfilled.  We  can  understand  Emer 
son  when  he  says : 4  What  we  love,  that 
we  have;  but  by  desiring  we  bereave 
ourselves  of  the  love.'  We  cannot  see 
beauty  face  to  face,  but  only  through  a 
thousand  veils;  what  we  see  we  cannot 
analyse  or  describe.  Even  before  these 
grosser  manifestations  of  beauty  of  which 


oftbe^oon 


our  senses  are  now  susceptible  it  hap 
pens  that  our  oaths  and  superlatives  pale 
like  lamps  in  the  dawn:  we  are  elated 
and  inarticulate :  we  hang  aloft  over  the 
worlds,  poised  between  a  rhapsody  and 
a  lament. 

4TN  heaven,'  said  Swedenborg,  'the 
i  angels  are  advancing  continually  to 
the  springtime  of  their  youth,  so  that 
the  oldest  angel  appears  the  youngest.'  It 
is  so  with  what  we  call  the  beautiful — 
an  angel  or  messenger  who  was  before 
Swedenborg,  before  philosophy,  and  who 
to  each  generation  of  men  as  they  awake 
is  contemporary  and  playmate  and  lover, 
if  they  will.  Eternally  young  and  fair, 
eternally  wise,  is  this  beauty,  like  the 
Gods  ;  infinitely  diverse,  infinitely  ap 
proachable,  whether  by  Platonism,  by  the 
Christ-spirit,  by  the  contemplation  of  the 
mystic,  or  by  mere  aptness  of  temper  — 
by  a  family  resemblance,  as  it  might  be 
said,  to  that  Idea  of  beauty  whose  kin 
ship  men  have  claimed  from  time  to  time 
in  all  ages,  and  by  intuition  of  its  ways. 
As  for  this  last,  may  it  not  be  the  truest 
way  of  approach — at  least  the  readiest, 
most  susceptible  of  moods  ?  It  is  thus  that 


CHAPTER 
II 


The  Idea 
of  beauty 


68 


Cfre 


CHAPTER 
II 


Mysticism 
and  the 
roving  of 
the  mind 


beauty  showed  her  form,  half-veiled,  to 
most  of  the  rare  men  and  women  beside 
whom  we  feel  ourselves  to  be  so  earthy 
and  who  have  gone  so  much  farther 
than  we,  so  that  we  seem  to  be  cripples, 
hunchbacked,  shamblers,  hardly  reck 
oned  of  the  same  pilgrimage,  hardly  pil 
grims  at  all  —  perhaps,  rather,  loafers  at 
the  road-crossings,  with  a  mind  to  turn 
aside  into  every  green  meadow. 

THAT  wandering  of  the  mind  over 
the  high  places  of  Christianity 
which  we  vaguely  call  mysticism  is  a 
tracking  of  the  footsteps  of  this  same 
Idea  of  beauty  along  one  of  its  number 
less  paths.  The  religion  of  the  mystics 
of  every  period  and  of  every  creed  has 
all  the  ardencies  of  youth  —  vigour  and 
longing,  poetry,  wonder,  grace  ;  it  has 
ever  been  the  lyrical  note  in  holiness, 
the  reanimation  of  languescent  faith.  It 
is  restless,  for  its  night-visions  and  wak 
ing  thoughts  are  all  one,  and  that  is  no 
worship  which  can  ever  sleep ;  rather 
is  true  worship  (again  I  will  add,  either 
of  a  God,  or  a  Lover,  or  an  Ideal)  that 
which  is  with  us  in  our  hours  of  watch 
ing,  and  which,  when  we  have  passed 


oftbe^oon 


69 


beyond  the  border  into  the  country 
of  dreams,  or  (a  little  farther)  into  the 
valley  of  death,  is  waiting  for  us  there 
also.  The  lives  of  those  who  climbed  to 
the  heights  familiar  to  the  sweet  tran- 
scendentalist  of  Patmos  and  to  him  who 
was  called  '  the  minnesinger  of  the  love 
of  God  '  were  full  of  a  perpetual  surprise. 
In  the  world  of  the  senses  men  say  that 
there  is  nothing  new  ;  in  this  supersen- 
suous  world  there  is  nothing  old,  yet 
everything  has  been  from  infinite  ages 
before  the  nebular  birth  of  the  world. 
For  the  experience  of  the  mind  is  end 
less  ;  and  though  it  is  sometimes  sought 
in  a  round  of  passive  and  sentimental 
exaltations  traversed  again  and  again 
with  the  same  yet  seeming  new  delight,  as 
by  most  of  the  saints  of  Italy  and  Spain, 
yet  it  is  sometimes  seen  as  a  spiral  whose 
base  is  set  on  the  earth,  its  flights  grow 
ing  steeper  to  infinity  and  permitting 
neither  repetition  nor  backward  look. 
This  hunger  for  the  divine,  the  ultimate 
beauty  is  more  than  a  dull  longing:  it  is 
the  voracity,  the  keen  desire,  of  one  who, 
rescued  from  starvation,  is  allowed  so 
meagre  a  diet  as  only  stirs  the  appetite 
to  cry  out  afresh.  The  mind  can  never 


CHAPTER 
II 


Cfre  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


The  Saints  of 
Christianity 


know  satiety,  for  as  its  desire  is  infinite, 
the  highest  delight  to  which  it  can  attain 
has  a  beyond,  just  as  on  earth  man  can 
never  reach  the  horizon. 

THE  saint  of  Christianity  has  gen 
erally  been  fated  to  pay  his  visit  to 
this  earth  like  an  unwilling  guest  and  slip 
away  unnoticed  ;  we  see  him,  but  do  not 
trouble  to  speak  to  him  :  suddenly  some 
one  notices  a  gap  in  the  noisy  circle,  and 
finding  no  oneto  fill  it  gracefully,  we  dress 
up  a  dummy,  call  it  by  his  name,  and  can 
onise  it;  then  to  the  symposium  again, 
for  'To-morrow,'  says  the  fool  who  sat 
next  to  our  saint, '  to-morrow  we  die.'  Yet 
the  saint  is  the  lure  of  analytic  minds, 
and  their  despair.  He  makes  havoc  of 
preconceptions  :  he  contemns  classifica 
tion.  He  comes  to  earth  for  the  briefest 
moment  and  is  cursed  and  heckled:  he 
leaves  mankind  stupidly  agape  as  after 
a  vanished  aurora.  There  can  be  no  fore 
cast  of  the  coming  of  these  eccentric 
orbs;  as  they  cross  the  dark  centuries 
they  leave  a  trail  of  fire  which  we  exam 
ine  telescopically  and  regretfully  as  our 
only  available  link  with  a  curious  por 
tent.  They  are  so  wildly  fascinating  to  us 


oftfje^oon 


because  at  heart  we  are  all  mystics.  You 
are  impatient  of  this  life  which  we  call 
finite.  You  long  for  more  than  a  mortal 
love.  Your  dreams  are  concerned  with 
eternity  and  space, your  waking  thoughts 
with  your  dreams.  Then  you  are  already 
of  kin  to  the  mystic  spirit;  its  loveliness 
will  not  be  a  matterof  indifference  to  you, 
and  its  infinity  will  not  be  intangible. 

THE  age  is  at  last  drawing  to  an 
end,  when  man's  location  of  himself 
as  it  were  on  a  temple  pinnacle,  over 
looking  prostrate  Nature,  was  an  integral 
part  of  his  faith.  We  have  passed  through 
the  epoch  of  baseless  authority  and  are 
passing  through  that  of  baseless  dissent. 
We  have  abandoned  the  artificial  asceti 
cism  which  is  the  fairest  aspect  of  all  the 
dualist  creeds,  and  we  are  approaching  as 
a  hardly  discovered  country  the  fresh  and 
inevitable  asceticism  of  Nature.  The  self- 
conscious  and  almost  euphuistic  garb  in 
which  the  monastic  ideal  has  appeared 
in  conjunction  with  religious  beliefs  is 
to  be  changed  for  a  virtue  without  Puri 
tanism,  an  austerity  without  maceration 
or  fast.  It  was  because  the  saintliness 
of  medieval  Christianity  put  out  its  own 


CHAPTER 

II 


The  saintly 
ideal  is 
eternal 


Cfre  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


Generations 
of  creeds 


The  religion 

of  the 
supermen 


eyes  that  it  perished  and  is  met  now  only 
in  one  rare  mind  here  and  there:  it  is 
because  the  saintliness  latent  in  all  or 
ganic  life  is  before  everything  keen  of 
sense  to  the  beauties  of  sense  that  it  is 
destined  to  override  every  successive  army 
of  theologies.  History  shows  us  its  pools 
of  semi-stagnation  fed  and  emptied  by 
the  occasional  torrents  of  progress,  and 
cries  to  us  that  only  a  new  faith  can  give 
a  new  impulse.  The  birth  of  Christianity 
came  when  the  more  irrational  Gods  of 
Hellas  and  Rome  were  discredited  and 
held  in  derision;  the  birth  of  empiricism 
when  reason  had. grown  stiff  in  the  fet 
ters  of  the  school-men ;  the  birth  of  natu 
ralism  comes  at  a  time  when  senescent 
Christianity  is  leaving  us — has  already  left 
us — stripped  of  all  fellowship  with  the 
Gods.  The  present  is  a  time  of  plumb 
ing  and  proving,  and  of  plumbing  espe 
cially  the  depths  of  theosophies  and  prov 
ing  the  warrants  of  authority.  As  we  pass 
through  the  deepest  valleys  of  nihilism 
(and  pass  we  must,  unless  we  would  go 
back  to  the  picturesque  enigmas  which 
puzzled  medieval  minds,  for  the  human 
mind  at  all  costs  will  ever  be  thinking), 
we  learn  to  know  the  roots  of  the  faiths 


oft&e 


73 


which  rise  above  us  on  all  sides  like  cold, 
white  mountains  of  unearthly  height  and 
design;  and  having  studied  the  embryo 
logy  of  religion  we  shall  distinguish  what 
is  permanent  and  noble  in  the  Idea  of 
worship  from  what  is  transient  and  foul. 
As  the  onset  of  empirical  science  cleared 
the  way  for  speculation,  so  nihilism,  a 
flying  column  of  negations,  must  clear 
the  way  for  a  new  and  purified  ideal.  We 
can  raise  no  lasting  fabric  upon  the  ruins 
of  crumbled  beliefs.  No  precaution  must 
be  forgotten  which  shall  prevent  a  re 
crudescence  of  superstition,  no  measure 
neglected  which  shall  help  on  the  devel 
opment  of  broad,  hale  philosophy.  Not 
but  that  its  teaching  will  be  found  to  come 
into  line  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  with 
every  primitive  instinct  and  every  de 
veloped  article  of  belief  which  men  have 
held;  for  all  creeds,  even  the  most  arti 
ficial,  have  sprung  in  the  beginning  from 
a  contemplative  awe  in  the  presence  of 
natural  objects  and  powers.  Let  it  be 
granted  that  the  religion  called  by  the 
name  of  the  Christ  is  in  purity  and  sub 
limity  the  noblest  of  all  religions  which 
have  yet  risen  to  greatness;  but  look  at 
Christianity  in  the  light  of  the  religion 


CHAPTER 
II 


74 


CHAPTER 
II 


which  is  still  to  come,  and  it  is  foul  and 
subsimious.  But  our  knowledge  of  Nature 
is  even  now  so  limited  and  our  love  for 
her  of  so  recent,  although  so  gradual, 
a  growth,  that  it  seems  to  me  there  can 
scarcely,  until  half  a  century  ago,  have 
been  material  to  form  such  a  character 
as  shall  express  at  once  the  chastity  and 
sensuous  receptiveness  which  are  parallel 
veins  running  through  all  organic  exist 
ence,  and  which  have  been  vainly  set  at 
right  angles  by  a  monastic  misdevelop- 
ment  of  the  worshipping  instinct  in  man. 
Let  me  say  at  once  that  I  do  not  mean  the 
ideals  encased  in  monasticism  to  be  de 
rided.  They  are  among  the  noblest  of  all 
ideals  which  circumstance  has  yet  driven 
the  mind  of  man  to  spin ;  they  became 
ignoble  only  by  being  appropriated  as  sup 
ports  to  the  tottering  Christian  mytho 
logy  which  affe&ed  to  be  above  and  was, 
therefore,  in  conflict  with  Nature. 

PERHAPS  it  is  necessary  here  to 
guard  against  a  misunderstanding.  I 
shall  be  told  that  the  monastic  ideal  was 
born  of  Christianity  in  its  vigour  and  not 
adopted  by  Christianity  in  its  old  age;  in 
other  words,  that  monasticism  was  the 


oft&eflpoon 


75 


direct  offspring  of  the  religion  founded 
by  Christ,  and  that  this  religion  was  not 
dependent  upon  the  monastic  ideal  for 
what  is  called  a  new  lease  of  life.  In  an 
swer  to  such  objections  it  is  sufficient  to 
call  attention  to  the  substrata  of  Plato- 
nism,  Kabbalism,  and  Sufism  underlying 
the  mystic  and  speculative  ideas  of  the 
cloister,  and  to  the  strictly  parallel  ideas 
of  self-annihilation  inflicted  on  the  fleshly 
Ego  and  the  consequent  final  merging 
of  the  individual  in  the  All-Soul  which 
inspire  the  similarly  misdirected  asceti 
cism  of  the  East ;  and,  secondarily,  to 
imagine  (as  far  as  that  is  possible)  a  me 
dieval  Europe  without  monks,  without 
monasteries,  and  therefore  without  either 
charity,  or  saint,  or  literature,  or  art,  and 
to  imagine  an  illiterate  and  unprogressive 
Christianity  set  to  deal  with  a  continent 
of  princes  brutalised  by  hereditary  power 
and  mobs  vicious  by  uneducated  instinct. 
The  briefest  contemplation  of  the  Chris 
tian  world  before  and  after  the  monastic 
period  is  enough  to  show  that  the  epoch 
was  one  of  temporarily  arrested  decay. 

It  is  not  strange,  though,  perhaps,  gen 
erally  unsuspected,  that  monasticism,like 
every  spell  which  man  has  laid  upon  the 


CHAPTER 
II 


€be  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


The  vitality 
of  religion 


world,  has  its  type  and  counterpart  in 
Nature.  It  is  so  often  forgotten  that  to 
her  as  the  mother  of  ideals  we  ought  to 
pay  our  reverence  for  the  great  victories 
over  ugliness,  the  high  thoughts,  whether 
aimed  at  or  fully  achieved,  the  world- 
conquering  institutions,  which  are  each 
'the  lengthened  shadow  of  one  man.'  It 
is  forgotten  that  without  light  a  man  can 
throw  no  shadow;  the  light  which  throws 
across  the  ages  the  shadow  of  Saint  An 
tony  streams  from  the  face  of  Nature. 

EVEN  with  the  knowledge  which 
has  been  piled  up  on  the  subject  by 
ethnology  and  comparative  philology,  it 
is  still  necessary  to  ask  ourselves,  What 
is  religion?  Whence  is  this  vitality  of 
dead  superstitions,  this  power  over  the 
world  wielded  by  men  whom  the  world 
(in  practice,  if  not  always  in  theory)  has 
agreed  to  call  madmen? 

Thomas  Hammerchen,  I  am  told,  was 
no  better  than  an  idiot  in  practical  affairs, 
even  if  he  did  write  the  De  Imitatione 
Christi,  which,  perhaps,  he  did  not ;  yet 
thousands  of  men  and  women  have  been 
moved  even  to  tears  by  this  same  book, 
and  hundreds  of  thousands  will  be  moved 


oftbe  a^oon 


77 


to  tears  in  the  future.  Religion,  it  seems, 
is  not  yet  quite  exanimate,  and  may  be 
studied  with  profit.  Once  again,  whence 
comes  that  clear  call  which  few  hear 
more  than  once  or  twice  on  earth,  borne 
towards  us  and  beyond,  a  bell-note  on 
the  swell  of  a  breeze — the  summons  of 
a  Power,  wiser  than  are  we,  to  cleanse 
ourselves  of  the  mire — social,  political, 
and  individual — which  clings  to  us  in 
our  momentary  flight  through  Time  ?  I 
have  never  ceased  to  remember  a  childish 
experience,  terrible  in  its  earnestness,  in 
its  sweetness  more  luxurious  than  any 
pleasure  of  the  senses,  which  opened  my 
eyes  at  the  age  of  six  or  seven  years  to 
the  beauty  and  wonder  of  the  loveliest 
poem  ever  conceived  by  the  mind  of  man 
— the  poem  of  the  idea  of  Christ  and 
Christianity.  I  did  not  know  then,  as  I 
know  now,  that  this  epic  was  not  the 
work  of  a  single  mind,  as  was  Paradise 
Lost,  but  of  generations;  I  knew  nothing 
of  the  countless  visions  of  obscure  monks 
and  nuns,  each  vision  adding  a  new  lus 
tre  to  the  radiant  figure  clothed  in  the 
broideries  of  a  world's  imagination  in 
such  a  manner  that,  like  the  great  solar 
myths  of  the  Aryan  nations,  the  idea  of 


CHAPTER 
II 


Christ  and 
Christianity 


A  world's 
master-poem 


Cbe 


CHAPTER 
II 


Christ  may  be  considered  as  a  poem 
wrought  by  the  whole  civilized  world. 
But  I  felt  then,  as  I  shall  never  feel 
again,  that  during  that  instant's  rapture 
of  sorrow  and  burden  of  ethereal  joy  I 
had  touched  a  hand  stretched  in  an  im 
pulse  of  the  most  passionate  love  and 
pity  from  somewhere  behind  the  silences 
of  stellar  space.  Suggested  by  I  know 
not  what  tenuous  chain  of  thought,  this 
sudden  lull  in  the  uproar  of  existence 
came  upon  me  in  the  midst  of  some 
childish  games  upon  a  Sunday  evening 
in  winter;  and,  as  in  a  large  company  of 
people,  all  talking  at  once,  a  sudden  and 
universal  silence  produces  a  kind  of  ner 
vous  shudder,  so  now  I  suffered  a  Panic 
tremor  of  delicious  affright.  I  ran  out  of 
the  house,  which  was  full  of  light  and 
movement ;  outside,  where  I  half  hoped, 
half  feared,  and  wholly  expected  to  meet 
him  whom  I  had  lovingly  been  taught 
to  adore  as  the  son  of  God,  I  found  only 
darkness  and  heard  only  what  seemed 
as  the  contrite  sighing  of  the  grass  and 
trees.  That  the  darkness  was  peopled  by 
myriads  of  beings  with  pitiful  eyes,  and 
that  the  trees  sighed  in  sympathy  with 
a  heart  that  was  never  again  to  know 


of  t&e  Spoon 


79 


even  a  moment  of  such  ineffable  joy, 
was  a  consolation  hidden  from  me  until 
many  years  afterwards,  when  time  had 
softened  some  of  the  bitterness  of  exile 
for  ever  from  all  such  luxuries  of  spir 
itual  life.  For  all  these  years  I  remem 
bered  only  that  once,  l  in  a  moment  of 
time,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,'  I  had 
seemed  to  hear  vibrating  to  some  inner 
sense  the  same  voice  which  said  ages 
ago  by  the  shore  of  the  little  Galilean 
sea,  '  Simon,  son  of  Jonas,  lovest  thou 
me?'  I  think  that  I  felt  then  something 
of  the  nature  of  that  which  I  cannot  even 
now  analyse:  I  mean  what  William  Law 
speaks  of  when  he  says,  'This  is  that 
instinct  of  goodness,  attraction  of  God, 
or  witness  of  himself  in  the  soul  of  every 
man,  which  without  arguments  and  rea 
sonings  rises  up  in  the  soul.'  Since  then, 
when  I  have  thought  of  that  strange  fig 
ure,  so  sweetly  feminine,  yet  of  so  lofty 
and  unwavering  hardihood;  of  such  set 
tled  melancholy,  and  so  lavish  of  joy  to 
the  simple  folk  who  alone  were  wise 
enough  almost  to  understand  him ;  playing 
so  great  a  part  upon  so  paltry  a  stage;  then 
I  have  wondered  whether  across  any  other 
world  than  this  has  fallen,  in  the  dawn  of 


CHAPTER 
ii 


8o 


Cfre  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


Solitude 


its  wisdom  and  hope,  that  same  mysteri 
ous  shadow  of  the  cross. 

I  HAVE  found  that  solitude  strips  the 
soul  and  leaves  it  defenceless,  but  also 
unshackled.  In  the  first  Ennead  of  Plo- 
tinus  we  may  read,  l  To  those  that  go 
up  to  the  holy  celebrations  of  the  mys 
teries  there  are  appointed  purifications 
and  the  laying  aside  of  the  garments  worn 
before  and  the  approach  in  nakedness; 
until,  passing  on  the  upward  path  all  that 
is  other  than  the  God,  each  in  the  lone 
liness  of  himself  beholds  that  lonely- 
dwelling  Being,  the  Apart,  the  Single, 
the  Pure.'  So  it  happens  when  the  sur 
render  of  the  mind  to  the  dim-peopled 
world  of  solitude  is  accomplished  :  at 
every  step  the  trammelling  robes  of  self- 
indulgence  and  self-deceit  fall  away  in 
rags ;  and  when  we  remember  that  among 
men  these  rags  were  blessed  and  hon 
oured  as  the  purple  of  kings,  it  some 
times  seems  that  after  all  we  have  chosen 
the  fool's  portion  and  foregone  such 
pleasure  as  the  world  gives,  only  to  be  a 
laughing-stock  to  our  own  nature.  But 
this  is  not  so.  The  rewards  of  this  fair 
lady  Solitude,  even  to  those  who  serve 


oft&e 


81 


her  but  for  an  hour,  are  perennial.  To 
turn  from  her  is  to  turn  from  immensity 
to  puerilities,  from  the  comradeship  of 
the  stars  to  acquaintance  with  foulness 
and  vice.  On  the  other  hand,  every  hour 
spent  in  her  shadow  is  a  regeneration ; 
the  sights  which  cross  the  vision  and  the 
thoughts  which  invade  the  mind  during 
complete  abandonment  to  the  influence 
of  solitude  leave  prints  indelible  by  the 
wear  of  centuries.  In  solitude  I  meet  my 
own  vileness  face  to  face;  it  is  there 
that  I  am  able  to  overthrow  this  elusive 
doppelganger  who  hitherto  has  been  my 
master.  There  at  length  the  phantoms 
and  silhouettes  which  once  passed  for 
realities  fade  away  in  the  light  of  self- 
knowledge  ;  the  a£ls  which  once  were 
stupendous  lose  their  stature ;  the  thoughts 
which  were  refulgent  are  seen  to  wane 
and  grow  pale.  We  are  confronted  with 
the  necessity  of  countless  revisions  of 
judgment :  he  who  would  be  solitary 
must  above  all  men  think  for  himself; 
'  what  everyone  believes  is  never  true.' 
The  solitary  man  proves  himself  to  be  of 
the  lineage  of  Ishmael  in  every  thought ; 
even  in  the  world  of  ideas,  in  the  com 
radeship  of  the  chosen  teachers  in  his 


CHAPTER 
II 


Ishmaelism 


Cfce  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


library,  he  must  bow  down  to  no  dogma, 
nor  suffer  his  mind  to  lie  at  ease  beneath 
the  caress  of  rhythmic  language  nor  to 
swoon  under  the  spell  of  alien  philoso 
phies.  The  turn  of  a  phrase  which  delights 
the  ear  for  a  day,  the  fabric  raised  by  a 
musing  intellect  which  delights  the  reason 
for  a  few  scores  of  centuries,  are  such 
meteoric  phenomena  as  the  mind  may 
reflect  upon  to  give  point  to  their  eva 
nescence,  but  to  which  it  may  offer  no 
allegiance  and  from  which  it  must  accept 
no  bias  of  judgment.  Though  your  phi 
losophy  be  fairer  than  the  Taj  Mahal  and 
more  firmly  grounded  than  the  Pyramids, 
as  a  hard  and  fast  rule  I  will  have  none 
of  it.  I  will  admit  that  the  mind  must 
needs  be  thrilled  at  the  touch  of  a  Plato, 
as  the  body  at  the  touch  of  a  loved  hand ; 
the  voice  of  a  saint,  heard  across  centu 
ries,  not  less  than  the  voice  of  a  lover, 
heard  across  a  garden  of  flowers,  falls 
too  musically  upon  the  heart  to  awake 
no  echo  of  answering  song.  By  the  gift 
of  enthusiasm,  our  divinest  possession, 
we  are  not  permitted  to  be  indifferent  to 
the  least  of  the  emanations  of  beauty. 
Of  man  we  may  say, 


'Son  coeur  est  un  luth  suspendu; 
Shot  qu'on  le  louche,  il  resonne.' 

The  Roman  who  wrote  in  the  sad- 
cadenced  metre  of  Sappho  the  rapturous 
misery  of  passion, 

'  Lingua  sed  torpet,  tenuis  sub  artus 
Flamma  demanat,  sonitu  suopte 
Tintinnant  aures  geminae,  teguntur 
Lumina  nocte,' 

and  the  Florentine  who,  though  he 
taught  the  world  to  love,  made  also  this 
confession, 

'E  s'  P  levo  gli  occhi  per  guardare, 
Nel  cor  mi  si  comincia  un  terremuoto, 
Che  T  anima  da'  polsi  fa  partire/ 

spoke,  it  is  certain,  no  more  than  the 
truth  j  and  they  spoke  of  that  kind  of 
beauty  which  over  the  minds  of  noble 
men  and  of  true  women  has  the  least 
power,  the  beauty  of  a  mortal  form.  Far 
less  transient,  far  more  potent  in  its  sway 
over  the  loftiest  and  most  insular  of  man 
kind,  are  those  waves  of  intellectual 
emotion  which  pass  over  us  when  we 
stand  before  some  splendour  of  human 
art,  or  hear  through  dreams  some  rainfall 
of  human  music,  or  read  in  books  the 
thoughts  which,  a  thousand  years  after 
the  vanishing  of  their  thinkers,  have  not 


CHAPTER 

ii 


'  Immortal 
hilarity ' 


84 


Cfre  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


ceased  to  vibrate.  Of  these  waves,  which 
are  the  swell  of  a  past  storm  in  a  greater 
mind  than  ours,  we  may  hear  the  thun 
dered  message  and  wonder  at  the  majesty, 
but  we  must  not  suffer  ourselves  to  be 
borne  away  upon  their  flood.  A  man  must 
pass  through  his  youth's  wanderjabre 
among  the  ghosts  of  philosophies  and  the 
ruins  of  faiths,  but  let  him  remember  al 
ways  that  he  stands  as  it  were  at  Hillah 
and  Mosul, which  once  were  Babylonand 
Nineveh.  Among  these  eldola  of  philo 
sophy,  the  tottering  memories  of  a  former 
grandeur,  let  him  walk  as  under  the  con 
stellations,  which  of  old  were  called  eter 
nal  ;  it  is  not  to  such  that  he  may  sacrifice 
his  mind's  autocracy.  With  her  myriad 
voices  Nature  calls  us  to  be  up  and  think 
ing;  the  gods,  the  heroes,  the  saints,  and 
each  of  all  the  prophetic  voices  of  the 
world  echo  this  cry  alone.  And  why  am 
I  to  consult  authorities  for  my  ethics 
or  my  belief?  If  my  ethics  fulfil  Nature's 
high  purpose,  they  can  never  be  super 
seded  ;  if  they  ignore  her  laws,  I  and  my 
race  are  inevitably  punished.  In  neither 
case  can  any  religion  or  system  of  thought 
afFecl:  my  destiny ;  a  man  is  not  handsome 
because  his  clothes  are  fashionable,  nor 


of  tfee  a^oon 


noble  because  he  is  a  Hindoo  or  a  Chris 
tian.  A  dominant  religion  and  a  sartorial 
craze  pass  away  in  about  the  same  length 
of  time  —  the  latter  in  a  few  weeks,  the 
former  in  a  few  centuries;  in  eternity  the 
difference  is  nonexistent. 

HEREIN,  then, lies  the  benediction 
of  the  lady  Solitude:  for  those  who 
love  her  she  equates  the  Past  with  the  Fu 
ture  and  the  Present  with  both;  history 
and  prophecy  and  the  stream  of  current 
events  are  judged  by  the  same  standard, 
for  all  are  equidistant.  Under  those  grave 
eyes  of  hers  it  is  not  possible  to  be  car 
ried  away  by  the  storms  of  fanaticism,  or 
moved  by  a  breath  of  self-deceit;  in  lone 
liness  we  learn  the  stability  of  the  mind. 
The  moving  tapestry  upon  which  kings 
and  queens  are  seen  to  acl:  their  solemn 
pageantries  passes  under  the  eyes  of  the 
lonely  watcher  and  leaves  him  unmoved 
—  passes  aus  der  Ewigkeit  zu  der  Ewlg- 
keit  bin,  yet  never  out  of  his  ken.  For 
the  earth-groveller  intent  on  gain  there 
is  neither  Past  nor  Future ;  for  the  dweller 
in  solitary  place  there  is  no  Present.  At  no 
moment  does  he  say, 4  Now  is  prophecy 
being  verified,' or,' Now  are  adtions  pass- 


CHAPTER 

ii 


Perspeftive 


86 


Cbe  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


The  tragedy 
of  wasted 
intellea 


ing  into  history  j'  he  sees  clearly  that,  be 
fore  he  has  spoken,  the  prophecy  is  ful 
filled,  the  actions  are  historical.  In  loneli 
ness  a  man  takes  of  existence  as  it  were 
a  bird's-eye  view ;  he  surveys  the  world  as 
might  a  spirit  afloat  in  space  or  a  fabulous 
inhabitant  of  the  moon.  Standing  at  a 
distance  from  earth,  he  has  attained  the 
focus  of  all  thought  and  notional  experi 
ence,  can  see  the  paltriness  of  the  most 
long-sighted  statesmanship,  and  know 
the  established  creed  of  centuries  to  be 
a  momentary  phase  as  transient  as  the 
phases  of  Venus,  and  like  hers,  ever  re 
current,  though  in  worlds  other  than  our 
own. 

SOME  years  ago  it  was  my  affectation 
to  think  that  my  favourite  study  was 
the  tragedy  of  wasted  intellect.  I  quoted 
to  myself  the  dead  sciences  of  astrology 
and  alchemy  and  the  instances  of  Ray 
mond  Lull,  who  discovered  a  key  to  uni 
versal  knowledge  and  was  murdered  by 
the  Moors  whom  he  thought  to  enlighten, 
of  Michael  Scot,  who  foretold  by  magic 
art  the  exadt  hour  and  place  and  manner 
of  his  death,  yet  did  not  escape  dying 
as  he  had  predicted,  and  of  Cornelius 


Agrippa,  who  in  his  youth  wrote  an 
exhaustive  treatise  upon  occult  science 
and  in  his  age  a  treatise  upon  The  Vanity 
of  all  Arts  and  Sciences  whatsoever.  The 
subject  is  now,  as  then,  one  upon  which 
I  often  dwell ;  no  longer,  however,  as  a 
pessimistic  reverie,  but  as  a  paradox  in 
optimism.  For  since  then  it  has  become 
clear  to  me  that  the  musing  hierarchy 
whose  wisest  watched  from  the  towers  of 
the  Babylonian  desert  the  majestic  motion 
of  the  constellations  could  not  have  been 
better  employed,  nor  the  searchers  for 
elixir  and  the  stone  of  philosophers  have 
gained  a  possession  more  priceless  than 
their  enthusiasm.  As  we  are  happy,  so 
is  the  good  that  we  do  in  the  world;  no 
miserable  man  ever  benefited  the  race. 
The  tragedy  of  wasted  intellect  is  for  me, 
then,  no  longer  a  tragedy,  though  ironi 
cal  still,  and  now  with  a  twofold  irony; 
for  that,  which  to  the  Chaldeans  and 
to  the  Middle  Ages  seemed  wisdom,  to 
us  seems  foolishness,  and  was  neverthe 
less  wisdom  after  all!  For,  surely,  that 
is  wise  which  best  fits  us  for  enduring 
bravely  and  nobly  achieving;  must  we 
not,  therefore,  treasure  those  two  gifts 
(which  are  like  beautiful  twin  children) 


CHAPTER 
II 


88 


Cfte 


CHAPTER 
II 

Life  no  more 
than  a  mo 
mentary  con 
templation 


of  our  lady  Mother  called  enthusiasm 
and  contemplation  ?  For  by  contempla 
tion  and  steady  labour  and  the  recep 
tivity  of  a  mind  schooled  in  enthusiasm 
we  discern  reflected  in  our  hearts,  as  in  a 
sheltered  pool,  such  starry  worlds  as  the 
stream  never  dreams  of;  for  the  rush  and 
froth  of  our  so-called  society  gives  back 
no  light  from  the  brightest  of  skies.  These 
worlds  and  constellations  of  thought,  as 
they  move  across  our  zenith  in  the  night 
of  uncertainty,  are  sufficient  to  sustain 
our  patience  and  to  lighten  our  hearts  for 
this  present  moment  of  time;  in  the  few 
days  or  few  years  which  divide  each  of 
us  from  death  it  may  happen  that  we  shall 
be  nearer  to  their  origin  and  truth — per 
haps  that  we  shall  hardly  escape  blind 
ness  from  their  light.  Such  glimpses  of 
the  mind's  faeryland  which  come  to  us 
in  a  solitary  life  serve  at  least  to  sustain 
our  faith  and  lend  their  colour  to  our 
ideals.  Without  them  our  outlook  is  upon 
mere  light  and  shade:  we  may  gaze  at 
the  world  and  profess  to  admire  it,  but 
in  reality  we  see  it  only  as  a  lunar  land 
scape  ;  it  is  colourless,  because  we  have 
taken  away  its  atmosphere.  Moreover, 
who  that  has  not  sometimes  lost  his  way 


oftbe^oon 


89 


and  followed  innumerable  Will-o'-the- 
wisps  ever  reached  the  goal  of  his  desire? 

THAT  pregnant  Laconism,  'Know 
thyself '  (said  to  be  heaven-sent), 
brings  forth  its  abundant  fruit  only  in 
solitude.  Yet  our  apotheosis  of  solitude 
is  utterly  vain  as  long  as  we  have  for 
companion  that  earthy-minded  part  of 
our  nature  upon  which  the  saints  heaped 
curses  not  all  unjustly.  Until  we  have 
purged  away  all  dross  of  wealth  and  vul 
garity,  we  know  nothing  of  the  value  of 
solitude;  until  we  have  cast  away  the 
stained  garments,  beloved  of  the  whole 
world,  called  social  duties,  we  may  visit 
Eleusis,  but  we  see  no  mysteries.  Soli 
tude  will  yield  herself  only  to  the  pure- 
hearted;  to  the  world-befouled,  though 
most  wildly  penitent,  she  can  be  only 
tenderly  pitiful.  For  those  who  go  to  her 
wearing  a  mask  there  is  no  help,  but 
rather  temptation  to  self-destruction.  You 
remember  the  woods  of  Westermain  ? 


AF 


'  Enter  these  enchanted  woods 
You  who  dare.' 

I3OVE   all  things,  honesty   is  de 
manded  if  a  man  is  to  benefit  by 


CHAPTER 

ii 


The  woods  of 
Westermain 


Singleness 
of  heart 


Cbe  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


Perspe&ive 

transcenden- 
talised 


being  solitary.  Throw  up  the  business 
of  deceiving  others  and  turn  to  deceiv 
ing  yourself —  what  gain  is  that  ?  It  would 
be  far  better  for  a  man  to  go  on  with  his 
cheating  and  money-making,  for  there 
is  said  to  be  satisfaction  in  that,  and  by 
force  of  habitual  repetition  of  commer 
cial  maxims  a  man  may  almost  come  to 
believe  them.  But  if  we  wish  to  carve 
a  soul  to  fairness  and  not  to  dishonour, 
let  us  remember  that  solitude  is  Nature's 
own  cool  hand  on  the  human  brow,  and 
that  of  all  imbecilities  Nature  most  de 
tests  a  lie.  It  has  ever  been  her  privilege 
to  offer  favours  with  one  hand  and  to 
take  them  away  with  the  other :  in  our 
simplicity  we  call  this  the  irony  of  fate, 
seeing  in  it  nothing  of  the  perversity  of 
man,  nothing  of  the  justice  of  Nature, 
who  gives  and  takes  with  the  logic  of  a 
pair  of  scales.  Dishonesty,  applauded  as 
astuteness  in  business  life,  is  moral  sui 
cide  when  solitude  makes  it  a  self-decep 
tion  ;  a  lie  then  (when  the  world  is  behind 
your  back  at  last)  is  a  leap  seaward  with 
a  millstone  at  your  neck. 


M 


EN  speak  and  write  of  Alexander, 
of  Hannibal,  of  Napoleon,  as  not 


only  heroes  but  almost  as  demigods.  Well ! 
a  man  has  conquered  a  state,  an  empire, 
a  world.  One  world?  Only  one?  And 
we  make  him  a  hero?  But  we  are  to  fit 
ourselves  for  the  conquest  of  innumerable 
worlds.  We  stand  here  in  the  palaestra 
of  great  minds;  our  Shakespeares  and 
Napoleons  are  giants,  but  in  their  hobble- 
dehoyhood.  We  must  not  be  loungers, 
idle  spectators  of  their  discipline  and  toil; 
into  the  bout  with  the  rest,  where  defeat 
itself  is  a  glory  ! 

MOREOVER,  though  this  hour  is 
to  be  spent  in  sowing,  it  is  a  seed 
time  which  is  its  own  harvest.  It  is  our 
fortune  to  taste  here  the  first  fruits  of 
what  we  planted  with  our  eyes  bent  on 
eternity ;  and  looking  along  the  pointed 
finger  of  analogy,  we  can  guess  what  we 
are  to  reap  hereafter  from  what  we  see 
here  as  half-grown.  The  spirit  of  change, 
flux,  progress,  which  rules  as  a  moon  the 
tides  of  nations,  shouts  us  a  warning  that 
the  sowing  and  reaping  are  co-eternal.  So 
far  from  our  bringing  nothing  into  the 
world  and  carrying  nothing  out,  we  both 
bring  and  carry  away  all  things ;  we  lay 
down  nothing  but  our  bodies,  and  these 


CHAPTER 

ii 


Sowing 


€be  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


Age 


as  easily  as  a  workman  lays  down  his 
tool,  his  other  hand  already  taking  up 
another  and  more  serviceable.  How  can 
a  man  dull  and  worn  with  age  cling  to 
his  blunted  edge  of  a  life,  when  the  finest 
tempered  steel  is  ready  to  his  hand  ?  Men 
say,  '  A  bird  in  the  hand  — '  that  slug 
gard's  proverb ! 

THAT  man  who  has  neither  whined 
for  death  nor  clung  to  life  has  said 
the  last  word  upon  existence;  he  has 
shown  a  fallacy  in  creeds  and  no-creeds. 
He  believes  nothing,  is  ready  to  believe 
all  things;  he  stands  for  empiricism  in 
metaphysic,  for  a  firm  base  upon  which 
to  pile  experience.  His  philosophy  is 
no  fabric,  but  an  accretion ;  he  passes 
through  a  life  and  it  leaves  a  deposit  of 
truth.  That  which  we  learn  in  our  three 
score  years  is  the  paltriest  knowledge; 
we  are  yet  at  our  schooling.  Our  idea  of 
the  universe  is  worth  as  much  and  as 
little  as  a  child's  opinion  of  Catullus.  It 
may  be  our  fate  (who  knows  how  soon  ?) 
to  develop  instincts  as  inconceivable  to 
us  now  as  is  the  instinct  of  generation 
to  a  child.  In  our  moments  or  epochs  of 
senile  depression  let  us  remember  that 


oftbe 


93 


we  are  only  half-grown;  we  must  out 
grow  many  senilities.  Our  immediate 
object,  so  far  as  concerns  this  passing 
phase  of  existence,  should  be  so  to  live 
that  we  may  stand  erecl:  both  in  mind 
and  body  in  our  old  age.  Whenever  we 
depart  from  Nature's  plan  and  purpose, 
we  add  another  chance  to  the  possibilities 
of  our  becoming  mentally  and  physically 
cripples.  A  man  should  stand  in  his  age 
like  Odysseus  among  the  suitors  —  with 
his  tattered  illusions  fallen  away  and  his 
mind  stripped  for  conflict  with  whatso 
ever  may  be  his  next  foe.  An  old  man 
whose  mind  and  bodily  frame  alike  con 
temn  support,  who  can  still  hold  aloof 
from  the  narcotism  of  religious  faiths, 
is  immeasurably  the  most  sublime  of  all 
spectacles  which  humanity  can  show. 
But  it  is  given  to  few  of  our  frail  race 
to  retain  the  clear  autonomy  of  thought 
until  the  hour  of  death.  The  more  sound 
and  healthy  the  body,  the  slower,  com 
monly,  is  its  decline,  so  that  sickly  per 
sons  are  the  most  likely  to  be  in  full  pos 
session  of  the  powers  of  reasoning  at  the 
time  of  death.  Nevertheless,  it  is  good  to 
make  it  our  aim  to  cling  fast  to  the  ideals 
of  our  maturity,  nor  suffer  for  a  moment 


CHAPTER 

ii 

Its  sublimi 
ties  and 
absurdities 


94 


Cfje  §>tfences 


CHAPTER 
II 


Age  a  greater 
calamity 
than  death 


that  cowardice  which  at  the  supreme  hour 
flies  for  comfort — yes,  for  comfort! —  to 
religion.  For  such  comfort  will  benumb 
the  reason  and  fetter  the  free  will:  it  is 
the  intellectual  counterpart  of  drugs  and 
alcohol.  What  a  pathetic  spectacle  is  man 
commonly  when  his  body's  puny  strength 
forsakes  it  and  his  hair  begins  to  whiten ! 
What  a  sorry,  dyspeptic  Silenus,  bab 
bling  now  of  by-gone  feasts  and  loves, 
now  mumbling  ill-remembered  prayers! 
The  Past,  in  long  and  lurid  perspective, 
and  the  Future,  already  slipping  into  the 
Past,  rise  alternately  before  him  with  his 
varying  moods,  the  latter  bringing  with  it 
a  flood  of  too  tardy  devotion.  How  hastily 
they  come  tumbling  out,  these  negledled 
petitions,  treading  hard  upon  each  other's 
heels  in  pitiable  confusion,  for  the  time 
is  all  too  short!  The  schoolboy  with 
an  unprepared  lesson  is  hardly  in  more 
tragic  plight:  surely,  there  is  no  sadder 
nor  more  ridiculous  sight  in  all  our  brief 
comedy.  Yet  it  is  absurd  as  well  as  cruel 
to  say  to  a  man  who  has  lost  his  physical 
vigour,  'You  can  be  strong  at  least  in 
mind.'  Our  mental  health  is  as  much  and 
as  little  under  our  control  as  bodily  health; 
and  when  age  comes  with  its  blurring  of 


oftfte^oon 


95 


fine  distinctions  and  its  torpor  of  the 
senses,  when  the  tense  strife  of  existence 
slowly  gives  place  to  one  long  dream,  and 
there  is  neither  true  waking  nor  true 
sleep,  then  all  firmness  and  all  ideals  are 
dormant  as  they  were  in  the  untaught 
child.  The  keen  glance  has  become  a 
flicker  :  the  masterful  will  has  forgotten 
how  to  frame  a  command  ;  it  inspires  no 
more  terror  than  the  mummy  of  a  Pha 
raoh,  at  whose  word  nations  once  trem 
bled.  There  is,  then,  clearly  a  duty  laid 
upon  us  (and  by  that  I  mean  simply  that 
it  is  due  to  ourselves)  to  put  on  now  the 
habit  of  thought  which  we  should  wish  to 
be  wearing  in  death,  since  in  age  we  can 
not  initiate  any  new  thoughts  or  ideals. 
That  this  habit  of  thought  will  be  over 
laid  in  our  minds  by  concerns  purely  tem 
porary  and  trivial  need  not  make  us  think 
of  such  preparation  as  a  useless  labour. 
Our  old  ideals  will  be  with  us,  encased 
in  a  chrysalis;  they  will  be  our  last  wak 
ing  thoughts  before  we  sink  to  sleep,  and 
so  it  may  chance  that  they  will  shape  our 
first  vision  of  the  more  than  earthly  dawn. 


T 


O  the  dwellers  far  beyond  the  out 
skirts  of  a  country  town  the  bells 


CHAPTER 

ii 


The  intangi 
ble  ideas  — 


Cfje  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


infinity 

time 

space 


of  the  great  churches,  with  a  clamour 
ing  chorus  from  lesser  belfries,  peal  out 
across  the  rolling  country,  over  fold,  over 
fallow,  confused  in  a  tempest  of  echo 
and  chime.  The  fusillade  of  the  small 
bells,  the  cannonade  of  the  great,  the 
volleys  and  file-firing  and  detonation  of 
mingling  peals  that  spring  into  space 
from  haze-blue  spires  as  the  clocks  strike 
six  on  Sunday  evening,  never  fail  to  bring 
home  to  me  the  same  ideas  of  power  and 
solemnity  as  are  suggested  to  every  human 
mind  by  the  thunder,  which  is  the  rever 
berant  hammer  of  Thor  and  the  voice  of 
Zeus  in  the  council  of  the  Immortals.  As 
in  the  waves  of  the  sea,  so  in  these  roar 
ing  billows  of  sound,  you  may  hear  now 
the  ululatus  of  fiends,  now  the  antiphon 
of  archangels. 

SUCH  —  are  they  not  ?  —  are  our  hu 
man  ideas  of  eternity  and  infinity;  of 
that  to  which  man  has  given  so  many 
shapeless  forms  and  which  he  has  so  long 
foolishly  worshipped  under  so  many  fool 
ish  names ;  of  that  in  which  (for  aught 
that  I  can  tell)  my  own  lady  may  now  have 
sounded  the  profoundest  deeps  and  ranged 
the  remotest  distances;  of  that  which  (for 


of  tbe 


97 


aught  that  I  can  tell)  may  still  be  to  her 
the  same  insoluble  riddle  that  it  is  to  you 
and  to  me.  The  very  words — infinity — 
eternity — are  just  such  a  roll  of  thunder 
in  the  mind  ;  our  thoughts  about  them 
reach  a  terrific  grandeur,  a  chill  and  Al 
pine  sublimity,  yet  they  are  nothing  but 
echoes  following  each  other  with  thou 
sandfold  reduplication.  At  the  moment 
when  death  came  to  the  Blessed  Fina, 
Virgin  of  San  Gimignano  and  Spouse  of 
Christ,  all  the  bells  of  the  churches  in 
the  town  were  set  ringing  with  a  sweeter 
than  mortal  harmony.  They  were  touched 
by  no  human  hands;  they  were  heard  in 
the  streets,  and  far  out  on  the  hillsides 
the  peasant  folk  rested  from  their  toil  to 
gaze  with  mild  perplexity  towards  the  city 
of  a  hundred  towers.  Our  ideas  of  such 
transcendental  notions  as  eternity  are 
this  same  super-mortal  harmony,  heard  so 
rarely,  never  understood.  We  ourselves 
cannot  grasp  the  noblest  of  our  thoughts, 
so  volatile  are  they,  so  full  of  sinuous 
variations  which  lead  us  somewhere  be 
yond  the  limits  of  comprehension.  In 
the  end  the  floating  vision  is  crystallised 
—  and  meagre.  We  have  learned  that  it 
cannot  be  otherwise :  there  are  soft,  grey 


CHAPTER 

II 


The  legend 

of  the 
Blessed  Fina 


98 


Cfje  Silences 


CHAPTER 
II 


outlines,  the  poetry  of  dawn;  afterwards, 
common  daylight,  and  on  the  horizon 
a  little  cloud  of  disillusionment.  So  have 
fared  many,  nay,  most  of  our  strivings 
after  the  mind's  phantasmal  desires  — 
strivings  whether  of  saint  or  philosopher, 
of  mystics  orthodox  or  delirious.  Yet  I 
may  hear  all  that  a  man  can  tell  me  of 
eternity  in  the  shouts  and  wailing  of  a 
sea  cave.  If  I  want  a  definition  of  the 
infinite,  I  shall  go  not  to  a  priest,  but  to 
a  hill-top  from  which  I  may  look  down 
into  the  eyes  of  the  dawn. 


Love 


Coma 
Berenices 


III 

I  LEANED  upon  the  parapet  of  a 
church  tower  and  looked  downward 
into  a  darkness  splashed  with  the  pallor 
of  monumental  stones,  upward  into  the 
spangled  veil  of  the  stars  which  is  the  veil 
of  my  lady ;  and  the  voice  of  my  lady, 
whom  her  relations  call  dead,  spoke  to 
me.  lAlas,  poor  dreamer!'  she  said,  cso 
hard  ridden  by  your  dreams!' 


T 


HAT  patch  like  an  asphodel  mea 
dow,  lying  in  space  between  Leo 


oftbe 


99 


and  Bootes,  and  called  Berenice's  hair, 
is  love's  symbol  set  among  the  stars.  I 
need  not  tell  at  length  that  sad  tale  with 
happy  ending — how,  when  Ptolemy  Eu- 
ergetes  left  his  kingdom  for  a  savage  and 
bloodthirsty  war,  he  left  also  his  queen 
Berenice  of  flame-yellow  hair  and  tender 
devotion;  how  she  sorrowed  over  his 
memory,  for  no  news  came  from  the 
army,  nor  any  token ;  how,  at  last,  she 
shore  away  the  fine  gold  from  her  head, 
and  hung  it  up  before  the  altars  of  the 
gods  ;  how  it  was  stolen,  and  Ptolemy 
returned;  how  he  raged  over  the  doubly 
sacrilegious  theft ;  how  the  astronomer 
Konon,  like  the  ready-witted  Hellene 
that  he  was,  saved  the  lives  of  the  temple's 
priests  by  taking  the  wedded  lovers  to  the 
palace  roof  and  showing  them  where  the 
lady  Berenice's  tresses  hung  in  the  ebony 
sky  of  that  old  Egyptian  night ;  and  how 
they  believed  him  implicitly,  for  they  were 
not  astronomers,  and  were  not  the  gods 
ever  gracious  to  them  that  loved  faith 
fully?  So  Berenice  and  her  king  have  be 
come  immortal  among  the  nations:  think 
you  that  besides  this  pair  no  man  and 
woman  ever  loved  in  that  ancient  world  ? 
On  the  contrary,  a  name  written  among 


CHAPTER 
III 


100 


Cfre  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


The  universal 
transcenden- 
talist 


the  stars  perishes,  but  a  name  written  in 
the  heart  of  a  man  or  a  woman  endures. 
In  some  few  millions  of  centuries  the 
threads  of  cosmic  gold  will  grow  dim 
and  be  seen  no  more;  our  earth  will  for 
get  its  dynasty  of  Ptolemies,  the  heavens 
will  know  no  Coma  Berenices;  but  do  you 
think  that  Berenice  is  forgotten,  or  that 
Berenice  forgets  ? 

THE  lover  speaks  beyond  the  senses 
and  his  whisper  is  audible  across 
centuries.  Life  is  nothing  to  him,  nor 
death  either ;  by  loving  he  has  put  them 
both  among  the  trivialities.  You  may 
hear  him  sigh,  if  for  anything,  for  such 
trial  as  man  never  yet  endured  —  for 
persecution  bitterer  than  any  martyrdom 
and  tortures  more  refinedly  cruel  than 
screw  or  rack  —  why  ?  That  he  may 
prove  his  right  to  be  scornful  of  earth- 
lings  and  their  pains,  for,  if  of  their  pains, 
then  also  of  their  sensualities.  As  a  boy 
looks  forward  to  manhood  as  to  a  time 
when  he  shall  repeat  with  a  greater  free 
dom  and  intensity  of  pleasure  the  hap 
piest  games  of  childhood,  so  the  lover 
looks  beyond  life  and  beyond  death  for 
the  fulfilment  of  that  passion  which  dur- 


of  t&e 


IOI 


ing  our  momentary  dalliance  in  time  can 
never  grow  out  of  its  infancy.  He  over 
rides  the  aeons  of  time  and  stands  aloft 
above  eternity;  behind  him  and  before  are 
countless  lovers  made  visible :  behind,  the 
lovers,  so  noble !  of  all  history;  before,  the 
lovers,  yet  nobler,  who  still  are  to  come: 
behind,  how  great  an  army!  before,  a 
vista  of  shadowy  armies,  host  upon  host, 
multitude  surging  upon  multitude,  with 
faces  all  upturned  under  starlight  —  the 
glow  of  the  stars  which  we  see  and  the 
glare  of  the  stars  which  lie  beyond  mortal 
sight.  Such  an  assemblage  of  his  kindred 
stretching  away  below  an  infinite  hori 
zon  is  the  lover,  and  he  alone,  privileged 
to  see  and  dream  upon. 

THE  heavens  are  calmed,  the  night 
lit  with  auroral  glow,  to  him  who 
rises  above  the  cloud-scud  of  obscuring 
Time  with  its  microscopic  fa6t  and  event 
and  desire.  He  cannot  walk,  as  other 
men,  merely  beneath  the  stars,  but  in 
their  company;  swung  between  heaven 
and  earth,  he  is  above  all  passions  save 
that  one  tumultuous  stillness  of  love.  In 
so  far  as  he  is  truly  a  lover,  he  may  de 
spise  the  world  and  yet  be  no  egoist,  de- 


CHAPTER 

in 


The  universal 
poet 


IO2 


€&e  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


The  universal 
prophet 


ride  fadts  and  institutions  without  being 
a  visionary.  He  cannot  fail  to  be  in  some 
sort  a  poet,  or  '  creator,'  whose  song  is 
the  growth  of  his  own  soul  and  its  re 
action  upon  a  fairer.  Test  the  world's 
lovers  by  this  standard,  and  most  will  fall 
short  of  it ;  nevertheless,  it  is  the  stand 
ard  to  which  the  lovers  in  all  history 
have  in  some  degree  striven  to  attain. 

YOU  may  say,  if  you  are  this  true 
lover,  that  the  beauty  of  the  sun's 
setting  is  her  beauty,  and  that  the  very 
talk  of  the  dead  leaves  is  concerning  her: 
to  look  in  the  book  of  Nature  is  to  find 
her  story  written  and  her  anciently  em 
blazoned  heraldry.  She  is  immortal,  if 
God  and  the  universe  are  immortal ;  for 
she  herself  is  the  universe,  and  she  is 
God.  The  saying  of  Christ  is  as  true 
in  her  mouth  as  in  his,  'I  and  my  fa 
ther  are  one.'  The  battle-shout  of  certain 
knights  was,  'For  God  and  my  lady!' 
So  the  love  of  God  would  be  no  obstacle 
to  the  love  of  this  his  fair  daughter,  for 
in  serving  either  the  lover  serves  both. 

A  lover  stalks  the  earth  as  a  man  among 
lay  figures;  he  has  the  right,  and  he  alone. 
The  whole  world  is  his  unravished  bride, 


oftbe^oon 


103 


for  in  this  his  ideal  of  womanhood  the 
whole  world  is,  as  it  were,  the  animat 
ing  soul.  Away  with  boundaries  and  dis 
tinctions!  They  cramp  a  fine  lover.  The 
microcosm  and  the  macrocosm  are  all 
one;  they  begin  and  end  in  one  priceless 
soul.  This  lover  knows  no  limits ;  he  deals 
with  infinities,  and  he  can  see  nothing 
on  this  side  of  the  horizon.  For  him  the 
riddle  of  earth  has  solved  itself;  the  very 
silence  of  infinite  space  is  articulate  in 
his  ears.  He  comes  to  earth  as  the  Gods 
did  —  for  a  brief  sojourn  in  a  corner  of 
his  demesne.  Fetter  him  there,  if  you 
know  how ;  the  cunning  of  Hephaestus 
and  the  strength  will  scarcely  avail,  for 
a  lover  is  stronger  than  the  Immortals. 
His  life  is  a  triumphal  progress ;  in  his 
train  the  heroes  and  poets  of  all  ages 
walk  as  captives,  for  he  has  superseded 
them  all  and  put  them  all  to  use  in  the 
building  of  his  own  soul.  What  is  noble 
for  the  philosopher,  the  artist  in  sounds 
or  colours,  the  soldier,  is  noble  for  him 
also,  inasmuch  as  he  sums  in  himself  all 
their  nobilities.  To  the  men  of  his  own 
time  and  planet  this  triumph  will  seem 
a  street-farce,  this  sublime  gait  no  more 
than  stagger ;  but  let  him  know  that  he 


CHAPTER 

HI 


Cbe 


CHAPTER 
III 


The  universal 
artist 


loves  and  that  even  for  this  cause  alone 
he  lives  for  all  time.  Never  lover  yet 
missed  immortality ;  can  our  sins  be  writ 
ten  in  a  book  of  God,  as  priests  tell  us, 
and  not  that  love  which  made  them  hide 
ous?  Shall  a  hero  in  aft  be  immortal, 
and  a  hero  in  all  else  be  forgotten  ?  Or 
shall  not  the  singer  live  as  well  as  his 
theme  ? 

These  two  minds  need  express  them 
selves  by  no  language,  whether  of  lip  or 
of  eye,  but  by  the  thought  alone ;  Har 
mony  becomes  the  greatest  of  the  Im 
mortals,  for  by  her  grace  they  may  free 
themselves  of  the  cumbrance  of  speech, 
yet  never  cease  to  hold  converse.  Alas! 
for  the  mind  which  has  no  other  to  read 
its  unwritten  periods  and  understand  its 
silences. 

THE  poet,  the  philosopher,  the  mys 
tic,  are  all  potential  lovers,  and  we, 
when  we  are  ripe  for  love,  are  their  wor 
shippers.  But  when  love  actually  comes, 
riding  upon  a  gale,  we  have  no  thought 
for  them  again.  What  are  Plato  and 
Dante  to  us  then  ?  Where  in  our  thoughts 
is  the  Helen  of  Homer  or  of  Goethe  ? 
Then  we  are  authors  of  Platonism  as  well 


oft&e^oon 


105 


as  readers,  though  we  can  barely  enun 
ciate  a  word  clearly  for  the  rush  of  our 
thoughts ;  every  art  is  ours  as  much  as 
Dante's,  or  Michael  Angelo's,or  Beetho 
ven's,  and  every  longing  and  thrill  of 
half-attainment  which  the  mystic  knows 
we  know  also.  We  can  see  sympatheti 
cally  with  the  optimist  or  with  the  pes 
simist  at  will ;  for  to  us  all  the  world  is 
a  golden  setting  to  one  fair  jewel,  and 
apart  from  her  it  is  bare  and  hideous. 
Thus  it  happens  that  no  standpoint  is 
amiss  to  us  ;  we  can  rail  at  woman  with 
Schopenhauer,  or  exalt  her  with  Rossetti, 
for  it  is  but  one  that  we  worship,  and  her 
we  can  justly  neither  praise  nor  blame. 

THE  moment  of  love's  awakening 
is  full  of  discoveries  and  portents  ; 
long  avenues  of  utterly  new  and  inter 
minable  thought  lie  there,  cleared  of  mist ; 
the  joy  of  a  scholar  over  the  dawning  of 
light  from  obscured  pages  is  a  pallid  like 
ness  of  the  wild  mirth  wherewith  a  lover 
watches  the  vanishing  of  the  shades  which 
were  wont  to  throng  his  starved  and  cre 
puscular  existence.  But  to  a  lover  are 
given  also  the  clues  which  lead,  this  one 
to  heaven,  that  one  to  hell ;  and  not  even 


CHAPTER 

HI 


Birth-hour 


io6 


€be  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


The  flaming 
heart 


himself  may  always  know  the  difference 
between  them  until  the  time  of  choos 
ing  has  utterly  gone  by.  There  is  darkest 
peril  in  the  birth-hour  of  love,  and  dawn 
ing  salvation.  We  of  dim  sight  stand 
between  clear  vision  and  a  thicker  blind 
ness;  if  we  fail,  we  have  foregone  an 
unveiling  of  eternity.  We  come  then  to 
a  crisis  more  than  temporal ;  as  we  carry 
ourselves  then,  so  are  we  shaping  two 
souls  to  ugliness  or  to  a  beauty  surpass 
ing  that  of  fairest  bodily  forms. 

THE  fa 61  of  my  being  a  lover  lifts 
me  from  the  clay  to  magnificence  ; 
for  a  lover  has  wealth  beyond  the  count 
ing,  can  give  generously,  can  bear  all 
things  with  equanimity,  even  to  the  loss 
of  her  to  whom  he  has  given  his  worship, 
if  that  loss  be  merely  by  death.  That 
most  portentous  scene  in  a  life  of  por 
tents,  when  the  Christ  (as  it  is  related) 
ascended  from  the  Mount  of  Olives  to 
the  sky,  is  reena&ed  in  each  of  our  lives 
when  we  are  bereft  of  our  best-beloved  ; 
for  the  lady  of  my  heart  cannot  go  from 
earth  but  in  a  cloud  of  glory, cannot  have 
an  end  less  glorious  than  the  saints.  The 
death  of  my  lady  must  hallow  us  both  : 


oftbe^oon 


107 


her,  because  now  no  foulness  can  touch 
her  memory;  me,  because  the  remem 
brance  of  her  every  and  inmost  thought 
will  keep  me  purified.  Moreover,  from 
my  servitude  I  have  learned  the  language 
of  the  great  among  lovers;  I  am  closer  to 
Petrarca  for  having  loved  another  Laura, 
to  Dante  for  being  thrall  to  another 
Beatrice ;  and  is  not  every  true  woman 
rightly  named  Beatrice,  '  she  who  holds 
the  gift  of  blessing  '  ?  Let  a  man  willingly 
suffer,  if  once  he  has  loved,  for  now  no 
fate  can  restore  a  balance  of  evil;  though 
shame  be  piled  upon  sorrow,  and  fear 
upon  pain,  he  can  endure  them  all  in  the 
strength  of  remembered  counsels  from 
purest  lips  ;  to  him  the  blessing  of  Lethe 
is  a  curse,  for  all  power  lies  in  memory 
—  does  she  not  acT:  as  bearer  of  messages 
from  the  lady's  stilled  heart? 

WHEN  we  read  the  Vita  Nova,  we 
hear  the  call  from  the  heights  of 
a  lover's  idealism  which  no  man,  be  he 
lover  or  not,  can  help  at  least  longing  to 
obey.  In  that  tiny  miracle  of  a  book  is 
found  the  sum  of  all  earthly  experience, 
or  at  least  so  much  of  it  as  is  not  infer 
nal;  its  songs  hold  the  germ  of  the  Para- 


CHAPTER 
III 


La  Vita 
Nova 


io8 


Cfre  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


*'My  lady  is 
desired  in  the 
high  heaven.' 


The  Queen 
of  Glory 


diso.  In  it  we  actually  witness  the  meta 
morphosis  of  a  good  and  beautiful  woman 
into  an  eternal  idea  for  worlds  to  dream 
upon ;  the  birth  of  the  ideal  Beatrice 
Portinari  in  the  mind  of  Dante  is  an 
event,  or,  rather,  a  process  comparable 
to  the  birth  of  the  ideal  Madonna  in 
the  mind  of  visionary  medievalism.  We 
find  the  pride  which  can  say  without 
vaunting, 

'Madonna  e  disiata  in  sommo  celo/ * 

and  the  high  veneration  which  knows 
the  lordship  of  Love  to  be  good, l  in  that 
he  draws  the  mind  of  his  faithful  one 
from  all  worthless  things.'  We  read  also 
this  passage :  c  Now  it  fell  on  a  day,  that 
this  most  gracious  creature  was  sitting 
where  words  were  to  be  heard  of  the 
Queen  of  Glory.'  You  or  I  would  have 
spoken  of  our  Beatrix  as  sitting  '  in  a 
church ; '  not  so  the  poet,  far-sighted  be 
yond  the  veils  of  sense.  Where  better 
can  the  lady  pray,  the  lover  watch,  than 
where  the  triumph  is  being  celebrated 
of  temperance  over  the  body's  desires  ? 
for  in  that  ideal  drama  of  Mary,  Virgin 
of  Nazareth,  c  Mother  of  the  Fair  De 
light,'  the  world's  lovers  bear  all  a  part. 


oftfee 


109 


Never  yet  lived  the  Christian  woman 
who  had  no  wish  to  be  to  her  a  daughter 
and  a  bower-maiden ;  never  yet  fought 
stainless  knight  whose  slumbers  were 
not  painted  with  his  lady's  features  show 
ing  through  Madonna's  form.  Herein  is 
poets'  glory,  to  wake  the  echoes  in  our 
minds  by  a  hint,  to  show  us  our  clay 
transfigured,  dust  shining  as  fine  grains 
of  gold.  There  'where  words  were  to 
be  heard  of  the  Queen  of  Glory,'  where 
gazed  her  faithful  from  lofty  niche,  where 
minds  rose  upon  her  ritual  to  seek  her 
self,  the  lover  is  to  gaze  upon  his  lady  : 
what  place  more  fitting,  save,  perhaps, 
a  mountain-top  under  cloudless,  sky  ? 
Thus  are  we  shown  that  love  and  re 
ligion  are  but  two  sides  of  the  Janus- 
faced  idea  of  worship,  the  latter  looking 
outwards  from  the  gates  of  the  heart,  the 
former  inwards  to  the  heart's  citadel  and 
shrine.  The  impious  mind  cannot  love ; 
the  loveless  mind  cannot  adore.  Did  the 
Semitic  folk  ever  pray  to  Moloch?  They 
bawled  at  him,  they  slashed  themselves, 
they  devoted  their  children  to  the  flames, 
but  to  pray  was  impossible  to  them. 
From  Dante  we  learn  that  assuredly 
that  is  no  prayer  which  can  be  spoken,  or 


CHAPTER 

HI 


I  IO 


Cfce  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 

*  '  Another 
was  just  then 
with  me.' 

Loneliness 
and  com 
panionship 


»' Abashed, 
the  pilgrim 
spirit  stands 
at  gaze.' 


Arfturus 


even  thought;  then  only  have  we  prayed, 
when  we  can  say  truly, '  Altre  era  teste 
mecho.'  *  Lastly,  we  sight  the  meaning 
of  that  utter  loneliness  in  the  apparent 
absence  (by  reason  of  what  is  called 
death)  of  the  Beloved,  which  is  yet  hap 
piness  because  it  is  deepest  intercourse 
—  a  loneliness  which  may  happen  to  be 
ours  in  actual  experience  also.  'La  tua 
mirabile  donna  e  partita  di  questo  secolo.' 
So  steadily  in  the  hand  of  this  godlike 
lover  is  the  balance  held  between  the 
trivial  and  the  matter  of  real  import ; 
'thy  wonderful  lady  is  no  longer  of  this 
time,'  knows  now  neither  epochs,  nor 
moons,  nor  birth-anniversaries,  yet  is  she 
still  Beatrice,  'giver  of  blessing.'  She  of 
whom  it  was  said,  while  she  was  on 
earth,  that  no  evil  could  bear  her  pre 
sence,  has  not  gone  utterly  from  sight ; 
still,  as  in  former  days,  is  her  salutation 
given,  and  still,  as  then,  'lo  peregrine 
spirito  la  mira.'  * 

THAT  star  in  the  west  sinking  into 
the  arms   of  the   river-valley   and 
reddened  by  the  veils  of  the  river  fog  is 
Ar6lurus ;  the  beams  which  are  falling 
on  my  eyes  with  the  gentleness  of  dis- 


oft&e^oon 


tant  candle-light  left  their  blazing  sun 
nearly  one  hundred  and  nine  years  ago, 
and  during  that  time  have  been  travel 
ling  at  the  rate  of  186,000  miles  to  the 
second.  Below  Ar&urus  a  cloud  is  ris 
ing  from  the  horizon,  and  there  must  be 
a  hurricane  blowing  in  the  upper  strata 
of  our  atmosphere,  for  the  speed  of  its 
approach  is  like  that  of  a  sandstorm.  It  is 
more  than  impressive,  almost  terrifying, 
this  sight  of  a  lonely  cloud  errant  in  night 
spaces,  this  silent,  scudding  hyperbole  of 
darkness  where  all  is  dark :  and  now 
Ar£turus  has  gone. 

HERE  I  come  to  my  moral.  The 
presence  of  the  heaviest  and  most 
intolerable  misfortunes  coming  between 
a  human  mind  and  the  passion  which  is 
to  make  it  realise  its  own  immortality 
is  of  no  more  consequence  than  is  that 
Titan  of  writhing  mists,  who  has  now 
overspread  half  the  sky,  to  the  immemo 
rial  flare  in  the  heavens  which  man  has 
named  Ar&urus.  We  forget  very  easily, 
do  we  not  ?  the  pettiness  of  even  the 
apparently  stupendous  among  sublunary 
things.  We  forget  that  agonies  the  most 
horrible  and  sorrows  the  most  bitterly 


CHAPTER 
III 


Dust  in  the 
balance 


I  12 


Cfje  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


( I  place  them 
in  ascending 
order  of  the 
magnitude  of 
their  effect  on 
the  heroic 
mind. 


corrosive  are  not  only  past, but  forgotten, 
before  the  ray  which  is  now  leaving  Arc- 
turus  has  reached  the  earth.  What  are 
worries  to  a  lover?  What  are  death,  pain, 
dishonour,*  to  a  mind  conscious  of  its 
rectitude  ?  They  are  still  less  to  a  heart 
conscious  of  its  passion.  Is  not  the  longest 
Reign  of  Terror  but  a  historical  episode  in 
a  dozen  centuries?  If  you  are  a  lover,  you 
are  set  above  the  worlds :  as  the  moon 
was  called  Asterodia,  4she  whose  way  lies 
among  the  stars,'  so  are  you  almost  now 
— in  a  trice  of  years — set  free  to  leave 
this  earth  to  its  jesting  and  to  rise  beyond 
death  in  company  with  the  fair  soul  over 
whose  beauty  the  aeons  can  throw  no  veil. 

BUT,  as  we  learn  so  early  and  so  sud 
denly,  it  is  folly  to  believe  that  there 
is  no  black  underside  to  the  Nature  who 
broods  over  us,  though  she  be  like  the 
loveliest  of  cumulus  forms  ever  wrought 
by  wooing  wind.  It  is  the  dark  side  of 
the  cloud,  threatening  horrors,  that  we 
find  eternally  most  visible,  hiding  the  airy 
pinnacle  and  glowing  wall.  The  gloom 
and  awful,  uplifted  hand  of  Nature  is  no 
dream ;  the  angel  above  the  threshing- 
floor  of  Oman,  the  bloody  crosses  and 


oft&e  apoon 


flaming  serpents  which  an  imaginative 
ignorance  saw  in  the  comets  of  past  ages, 
are  suggestive  of  a  fa&  which  men  are 
ever  thrusting  aside,  the  facl  that  Nature 
violated  will  take  thousandfold  venge- 

O 

ance.  Let  a  man  offend  her,  and  he  in 
volves  a  score  of  generations  in  her  nets  ; 
his  children  are  born  into  a  smiling  world 
with  halters  round  their  necks.  And  why 
not  ?  The  halters  were  placed  there  by 
himself,  not  by  Nature.  Would  we  have 
our  goddess  a  laughing-stock,  a  weak 
ling,  without  the  power  to  enforce  her 
sanctions?  We  know  —  men  knew  be 
fore  Lucretius  articulated  their  unspoken 
thought  —  that  in  this  fearful  and  inex 
orable  mood  she  is  at  her  noblest.  No 
towering  Jove  astride  the  lurid  heavens, 
not  even  the  silent  majesty  of  Athene 
Parthenos,  grey-eyed,  agaze  from  the 
city  across  leagues  of  sea,  nor  the  purity, 
whiter  and  deadlier  than  molten  steel, 
of  the  All-Wise,  to  whom  it  was  said 
that  the  yearning  soul  fled  mothlike  to  its 
glory  and  doom,  can  be  compared  with 
her  in  the  grandeur  of  her  wrath.  We 
know,  though  we  deny  it  daily,  that  our 
wickedness  is  her  grief;  the  cruel  a£t,  the 
chilled  heart,  send  a  pang  through  Na- 


CHAPTER 

HI 


The  wrath 
of  Nature 


Cfre  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


Reparation 


ture;  we  never  wrong  an  individual,  but 
a  world,  a  universe.  The  anger  of  this 
our  Mother  is  raised  to  the  tragic  sub 
limity  by  its  being  tempered  with  grief. 
I  say  'with  grief,'  but  never  with  relent 
ing;  and  in  the  apparent  horror  of  those 
dark  times,  when  she  stalks  abroad  in 
purple  and  spreads  a  pall  over  Memphis 
or  Babylon  or  Hellas,  the  hands  of  the 
discerning  are  never  raised  to  an  inexo 
rable  power,  however  the  timorous,  the 
ignorant,  the  strangers  to  bird  and  beast 
and  field  may  fall  into  a  hysterical  invo 
cation  of  this  and  that  divinity.  Yet, 
though  her  law  is  unaltered,  acl:  and  re 
ward  being  not  merely  inseparable,  but 
one  event,  she  finds  a  way  to  repair  the 
mischief  by  building  her  faithful  hearts 
into  the  new  race.  As  Greece  tamed  her 
Roman  conquerors,  so  it  has  been  in  all 
the  cataclysms  of  history.  We  learn  from 
a  beaten  foe,  and,  if  we  have  ourselves 
yielded,  we  are  caught  up  in  the  cyclone 
of  a  conquering  people.  What  deed  of 
Gods  or  prophets  has  equalled,  what  can 
even  suggest,  these  miracles  of  simulta 
neous  vengeance  and  renovation,  so  irre 
sistible,  so  automatic  ?  From  the  wars  of 
cellular  bodies  to  the  tumults  of  flaming 


oftbe 


suns,  the  balance  of  death  and  new  birth, 
of  generation  and  decay,  is  eternally 
self-adjusting  even  to  a  feather's  weight. 
It  is  possible  for  us  of  this  age,  with  our 
free  gaze  down  the  aisles  of  history,  to 
see  what  Egypt  and  Babylon  could  not 
see — that  Nature  caresses  most  tenderly 
where  she  has  struck  hardest. 

A>  Nature's  treatment  of  worlds  and 
nations,  so  is  her  treatment  of  each 
beast  and  plant  and  everything  possessed 
of  never  so  rudimentary  a  personality.  I 
may  have  done  nothing  wrong,  nor  my  an 
cestors,  yet  in  suffering  sorrow  I  am  suf 
fering  no  injustice.  The  balance  of  cosmic 
good  and  evil  requires  that  I  should  suf 
fer,  and  who  am  I,  that  I  should  dispute 
the  laws  of  a  mechanism  which  has  been 
working  smoothly  for  millions  of  years  ? 
Sometimes  we  are  inclined  to  complain, 
naturally,  though  wrongly;  then  let  us  go 
out  under  the  stars,  and  consider  whether 
those  vast  deserts  of  stellar  inanity  do 
not  dwarf  our  high  tragedy  to  the  light 
est  and  most  momentary  of  masques  ? 
I  would  not  be  thought  to  slight  a  hu 
man  sorrow;  the  mimes  of  those  world- 
dramas  that  recur  from  time  to  time  in 


CHAPTER 

in 


Justice 


n6 


Cfre 


CHAPTER 
III 


Development 


the  pages  of  history,  as  at  Salamis,  Zama, 
Waterloo, cause  no  greater  stir  among  the 
stars ;  even  Laconian  Helen,  that  radiant 
ideal,  one  of  the  human  imagination's 
chosen  lovers,  must  fade  to  a  dancing, 
diaphanous  ephemeron  under  our  con 
templation  of  infinite  vistas  of  worlds. 

IN  the  keenest  lancinating  pains  which 
the  mind  can  suffer  we  are  not  being 
hardly  treated.  We  are  receiving  measure 
for  measure.  If  for  an  hour,  or  a  year, 
or  a  thousand  years,  our  burdens  shall 
have  been  more  than  is  common,  then 
our  strength  is  grown  by  so  much  greater 
than  the  strength  of  our  fellows.  On  this 
earth  we  are  thwarted,  confined,  under 
authority ;  then  we  shall  be  the  stronger 
for  our  sojourn  here.  To  nations  and  men 
and  ideas  oppression  ever  has  been  a  wise 
nurse,  stiffening  the  spirit  to  conquest ; 
all  history  tells  only  of  the  swingof  a  pen 
dulum.  'To-morrow  we  die,'  says  one. 
'Let  us  eat  and  drink.'  Rather  let  us  fast 
and  be  sober,  in  case  the  morrow  bring 
fighting.  Another  cries,  '  Rest  ?  Shall  I 
not  have  all  eternity  to  rest  in  ? '  and  is 
almost  as  far  from  the  truth.  Because 
we  find  no  rest  here,  are  we  to  infer  a 


of  tbe 


117 


rest  hereafter  ?  We  ought  rather  to  infer, 
groping,  as  ever,  among  analogies,  that 
everywhere  is  restlessness,  everywhere 
motion  and  activity.  When  has  a  man 
seen  an  eddy  in  a  stagnant  pond  ?  Yet 
that  is  his  idea  of  this  earthly  life.  More 
over,  in  Paradise  and  Nirvana  can  be  no 
life,  but  only  existence  —  no  real  sleep 
nor  waking,  but  only  a  doze.  Would  you 
take  a  strong,  unyielding  soul,  to  whom 
the  strife  against  great  odds  is  the  very 
breath  of  his  life,  and  pen  him  in  a  gar 
den?  The  lion  eating  straw  like  the  ox  is  a 
more  credible  fancy.  It  behoves  us  rather 
to  lengthen  our  stride,  to  follow  the 
straight  trail  with  no  mirage  of  ultimate 
Elysian  fields,  no  hope  of  our  war-song 
ever  dying  away  to  a  vesper  hymn.  'Man 
is  something  to  be  surpassed; '  because  he 
can  never  be  surpassed  in  this  life  we  need 
not  despair.  We  are  not  pressed  for  time; 
we  have  infinite  space  for  a  workshop 
and  eternity  in  which  to  labour.  We  may 
spend  this  time  on  earth  in  slumber,  but 
then  it  will  be  harder  to  put  on  the  har 
ness  and  clench  the  mailed  fist ;  it  is  bet 
ter  spent  in  preparation  for  whatsoever 
task  may  arise.  On  the  eve  of  battle  the 
wise  heart  cannot  slumber;  rather  it  takes 


CHAPTER 
III 


u8 


Cbe  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


The  boon 
of  anguish 


counsel  until  the  dawn  and  the  battle  are 
at  hand.  We  give  time  and  care,  and  far 
too  much  of  both,  to  makingourselves  effi 
cient  for  this  life,  instead  of  for  the  thou 
sand  lives  to  come.  It  matters  little  that 
we  cannot  write  a  Hamlet  or  add  two  and 
two,  if  only  we  can  rule  our  own  souls 
and  shape  them  loan  existence  more  than 
temporal. 

WHAT  we  deem  to  be  Fortune's 
smile  is  a  sorry  grimace  after  all ; 
her  frown  has  the  truer  beauty.  That 
man  or  woman  achieves  the  highest  no 
bility  who  is  left  single-handed  against 
the  greatest  odds  ;  the  very  best  fate  that 
can  befall  us  is  to  be  deserted  by  those 
upon  whose  aid  we  rely,  and  betrayed  by 
the  hearts  which  have  beat  against  our 
own.  Such  desertion  or  betrayal  may,cause 
us  the  keenest  anguish  which  it  is  possi 
ble  in  our  presently  limited  range  of  emo 
tions  to  experience;  but  in  spite  of  this, 
nay,  rather  for  this  very  reason,  it  is  the 
greatest  boon  that  can  fall  to  our  lot.  By 
adversity  we  learn  to  stand  alone,  and  to 
repudiate,  though  we  might  have  reaped 
a  benefit  therefrom,  the  infirm  ideal  of 
bearing  one  another's  burdens.  By  ad- 


oftfce^oon 


versity  we  grow  cold  to  the  transient  gain, 
and  turn  with  deliberation  to  the  shaping 
our  own  souls.  By  adversity  we  add  cu 
bits  to  our  stature  and  grow  to  manhood 
in  an  hour;  as  we  hear  of  men  turning 
grey  in  a  single  night  through  great  sor 
row,  so  we  may  be  sure  that  it  is  not  in 
outward  appearance  only  that  suffering 
adds  years  to  our  age.  It  is  strange  and, 
in  part,  unfortunate  that,  when  once  they 
are  at  an  end,  the  long,  sunless  hours  of 
pain  fade  swiftly  from  the  sight,  and  we 
forget  them;  but  the  brief  moments  of 
joy,  like  stars  gathered  in  familiar  con 
stellations  round  the  memorable  things 
of  our  lives,  are  with  us  until  death — 
and  why  not  beyond?  Yet  even  with  such 
vision  as  we  have,  we  may  see,  if  we  will, 
a  myriad  of  new  stars.  They  are  the  stars 
of  a  nebula  which  is  called  Pain. 

YESTERDAY  the  field  beyond  this 
garden-hedge  was  being  mown  in 
the  old-fashioned  way  which  still  lingers 
on  here.  The  scythe  swept  through  the 
grass,  a  gleaming,  malformed  Destiny  ; 
I  saw  its  rhythmic  rise  and  fall,  heard 
its  ironical  sigh  as  each  swath  of  tender 
green  lives  sank  to  forgetfulness  beneath 


CHAPTER 

iii 


Death 


I2O 


Cf)e  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


Its  insignifi 
cance 


its  icy  touch.  That  sigh  is  the  audible 
expression  of  the  chill  cynicism,  freezing 
the  heart,  which  we  call  too  euphemis 
tically  the  irony  of  fate.  I  had  watched 
the  grass  in  this  field  since  it  was  the  pal 
est,  most  inexperienced  of  greennesses  ; 
in  the  heyday  of  its  youth ;  in  its  June 
vigour  and  boisterous  Saturnalia,  with 
those  gay  mummers,  the  poppies,  dancing 
through  the  long  day  in  its  midst.  Here 
sun  and  rain  and  the  morning  dew  had 
squandered  their  treasure  ;  the  earth  had 
given  her  best  gifts  ;  and  now  under  the 
dry,  summer  mists,  into  which  the  song 
of  the  lark  fell  from  far  above  in  tiny  drops 
of  sound,  came  the  sudden  gleam  and  tre 
mor,  the  rustle  of  proud,  stricken  stems. 

IT  is  not  possible  to  forget  how  the 
author  of  the  one  hundred  and  third 
Psalm  wrote:  4  As  for  man,  his  days  are 
as  grass :  as  a  flower  of  the  field,  so  he 
flourisheth.  For  the  wind  passeth  over  it, 
and  it  is  gone ;  and  the  place  thereof  shall 
know  it  no  more.'  Yet  those  two  inci 
dents,  birth  and  death,  to  one  of  which 
we  attach  all  conceivable  epithets  of  hor 
ror  and  finality  and  gloom,  are  no  more  a 
beginning  and  an  end  than  are  the  sun's 


oftfte^oon 


121 


rising  and  setting,  or  the  sleep  and  wak 
ing  of  delicate  flowers.  The  darkness 
which  stills  the  thrush's  rondo  and  the 
sparrow's  travesty  on  three  notes  brings 
with  it  the  call  of  the  owl  and  the  nightin 
gale's  plaintive  romance;  and  mythology, 
the  storehouse  of  primary  and  beautiful 
truths,  knows  these  two  as  the  birds  of 
wisdom  and  of  dolorous  love.  So  the  hour 
when  twilight  edges  away  to  the  dark 
ness, the  hour  when  life  for  a  space  grows 
placid  in  death,  are  alike  no  more  than 
a  time  of  exchanging  old  songs  for  new; 
and  whether  it  happens  hereafter  that 
we  sleep  or  wake,  there  will  always  and 
in  all  places  be  heard  something  of  the 
clear  tones  of  wisdom  and  the  exquisite 
sorrowing  of  love.  These  and  all  the  ele 
mental  truth  and  beauty  which  the  ages 
have  shaped  must  be  in  every  world  eter 
nal  and  ageless  —  imperfect,  perhaps,  or 
overcast  with  superstitions,  but  at  no 
time  non-existent.  We  ought,  therefore, 
to  meet  death  with  our  minds  intent  upon 
nothing  but  what  is  immortal  —  upon 
those  things  which  must  have  been  at 
our  sides  in  all  worlds  hitherto,  if  such 
there  have  been,  and  in  all  worlds  to 
come  await  us  as  radiant  brides ;  and  to 


CHAPTER 

in 


122 


€&e  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


Its 

adventitious 
solemnity 


cherish  the  spirit  of  that  farewell  of  Saint 
Paul  to  the  Philippians  :  l  Whatsoever 
things  are  true,  whatsoever  things  are 
honest,  whatsoever  things  are  just,  what 
soever  things  are  pure,  whatsoever  things 
are  lovely,  whatsoever  things  are  of  good 
report ;  if  there  be  any  virtue,  and  if  there 
be  any  praise,  think  on  these  things.' 

WE  are  apt  to  feel,  perhaps,  that 
there  are  notions  belonging  to 
death  so  solemn  and  terrific  that  man 
kind  in  general  can  never  cease  to  re 
gard  it  as  a  horror  to  be  long  postponed 
and  even  spoken  of  in  undertones  as  of 
fear.  Its  mysterious  finality  —  the  com 
plete  dissolution  —  the  fact  that  in  all 
history  there  is  not  a  single  authenticated 
instance  of  one  returning  after  death  to 
revisit  the  earth  —  these,  you  say,  are 
facts  which  no  man  will  ever  contem 
plate  without  some  misgiving.  But  this 
appearance  of  finality,  of  total  extinction, 
is  no  more  than  an  error  of  perspective: 
we  stand  in  the  shadow  both  of  birth 
and  death,  as  in  a  narrow  gorge,  and  so 
close  to  either  that  their  true  nature  is 
utterly  indistinguishable.  Could  we  take 
a  wider  cosmic  view,  birth  and  death 


oftfje^oon 


123 


would  appear  as  ridges  in  a  furrowed  field 
— as  mere  contingencies  in  a  cycle  of  ex 
istence  of  which  this  earth  is  the  merest 
fragment.  Do  we  marvel  that  the  butter 
fly  never  returns  to  the  chrysalis  state  ? 

IT  is  such  absence  or  error  of  per 
spective  that  the  animistic  habit  of 
thought  can  correct.  When  we  watch 
the  flowers  that  die  day  by  day  and  the 
insects  whose  life  may  be  reckoned  in 
hours,  when  we  live  among  these  small 
and  weakly  forms  of  existence,  of  a 
frailty  so  pathetically  human,  and  range 
ourselves  beside  them  as  our  fellow- 
travellers  through  'the  everlasting  Now,' 
then  we  learn  to  see  man  as  a  fragment 
of  the  Cosmos  and  not  the  cosmos  as 
a  supplement  to  Man;  and  in  the  passing 
of  all  existence,  the  lovely  and  the  foul, 
through  the  change  which  we  call  death, 
we  see  only  the  splitting  of  the  blind 
and  sleepy  chrysalis,  the  bursting  of  the 
seedling  in  its  tomb.  Concerning  our 
modern  life  the  text  of  the  animistic 
spirit  is  the  poverty  of  mere  wealth;  con 
cerning  death  it  has  a  single  message  — 
'Wait!'  By  following  this  time-spirit  of 
animism,  though  it  seem  never  so  plainly 


CHAPTER 

in 


Death  and 
animism 


124 


€&e  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


Inaudible 
harmonies 


A  dream 


to  be  a  swan's  song  to  the  ear  and  to  the 
eye  a  Jack-o'-lantern,  we  come  at  length 
to  accept  as  a  compromise  that  state  of  ex 
pectation  which  best  can  fit  us  for  the  time 
of  striking  tents  and  setting  forth  upon 
the  next  stage  of  our  progress — whither? 

WHAT  is  death,  that  we  should 
hate  the  thought  of  it  ?  I  think 
—  I  cannot  help  thinking  of  death  as  a 
stepping  out  into  open  air,  as  the  dawn 
ing  of  a  new  vision,  or  as  a  recollection 
of  forgotten  things  when  the  last  ca 
dences  of  this  our  earthly  nocturne  are 
floating  into  the  soul,  wave  upon  sleepy 
wave,  until  all  our  hopes  and  ideals  mur 
mur  in  gorgeous  consonance  with  its 
harmonies.  You  remember  with  what 
alternation  of  gloom  and  sunshine,  so 
wonderfully  painted  in  Wagner's  music, 
the  Gods  crossed  the  rainbow-bridge  into 
Walhalla?  It  is  as  crossing  such  a  bridge 
and  as  hearing  such  music  that  a  man 
should  pass  from  his  cradle  in  Time  to 
a  wider,  unfettered  manhood  in  Eternity. 

OF  the  psychology  of  dreams  much 
has  been  written,  little  is  known ; 
but  almost  any  dream  faithfully  told  has 


oftbe  £@oon 


125 


a  deep  and  hardly  expressible  interest. 
I  dreamed  at  a  time  when  death  had  been 
lately  present  in  my  thoughts  that  I  met  in 
the  fields  a  child  of  marvellous  beauty  and 
grace.  Of  his  dress,  his  bearing,  and  his 
mien  I  remember — ah !  the  perversity  of 
dreams! — nothing  except  their  princely 
and  Oriental  magnificence ;  only  in  his 
eyes  can  I  recall  the  limitless  depths  — 
'deeper  than  e'er  plummet  sounded'  — 
of  expression.  In  their  gaze  was  nothing 
chill  or  wintry,  but  rather  something  of 
an  autumnal  temper  —  of  a  half-volup 
tuous  languor,  as  in  the  eyes  of  one  who 
had  gazed  too  long  upon  woods  of  beaten 
copper  and  trees  gilded  by  the  Midas 
touch  of  death,  upon  fathomless  glow  of 
sunset  and  mist-wreaths  twisted  by  the 
twilight  airs  for  summer's  bier,  and  who 
had  heard  in  the  thin  rustle  of  the  willows, 
as  they  sigh  their  leaves  into  the  stream, 
the  song  of  La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci. 
I  gazed  at  him,  and  his  beauty  and  sorrow 
became  in  some  strange  way  no  longer 
his,  but  mine ;  as  by  a  transient  gleam 
of  light  I  understood  for  one  moment 
of  luxurious  anguish  the  nature  of  that 
mingled  pain  and  delight  of  which  I  had 
read  in  Saint  Teresa's  story  of  her  life. 


CHAPTER 
III 


126 


Cfre  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


Dreaming 


A  warning  voice  from  some  immense 
distance  urged  me  to  fly,  but  like  a  heed 
less  lover  I  brushed  discretion  aside,  and, 
'Tell  me  your  name  !'  I  said.  I  caught 
the  child's  small,  white  hand.  It  was 
colder,  far  colder,  than  ice ;  and,  before 
he  could  tell  me  his  name,  I  awoke. 

Even  now  the  extreme  bitterness  of 
that  awakening  has  scarcely  faded  from 
my  memory,  for  with  every  day  the  be 
lief  has  grown  fast  upon  me,  now  amount 
ing  to  certainty,  that  his  name  was  no 
other  than  Death. 

I  CANNOT  help  thinking  that  such 
dreams  as  these,  which  seem  like  a 
coquetry  of  Beauty  with  the  enamoured 
soul  momentarily  freed  from  its  prison, 
have  a  deeper  significance  than  we  prac 
tical  beings  suppose.  I  know  that  in 
thinking  about  a  subject  which  is  bar 
nacled  with  old  superstitions,  I  may  be 
unconsciously  affected  by  their  influence. 
I  know  that  dreams  are  to  a  great  extent 
dependent  upon  physiological  causes.  Yet 
in  spite  of  all  this  I  continue  to  specu 
late  upon  a  matter  about  which  I  shall 
never  have  any  certain  knowledge  as  long 
as  I  remain  on  earth.  Perhaps  also  the 


oftfje^oon 


127 


only  fa6l  of  which  I  am  really  sure  in 
regard  to  this 

'Weird,  wild  clime  that  lieth  sublime 
Out  of  Space,  out  of  Time,' 

which  we  call  Dreamland,  is  that  I  have 
brought  back  from  its  wilderness  a  store 
of  such  memories  as  the  heart  longs  for. 
In  a  life  passed,  like  mine,  less  among 
men  and  women  than  among  lights  and 
shadows,  and  girt  with  shadowy  joys  and 
pains,  these  dreams  are  events,  their 
scenery  is  powerfully  dramatic,  the  mem 
ory  of  them  forms  a  character;  of  those 
that  are  remembered  at  all,  none  is  ever 
forgotten;  of  those  that  are  remembered, 
the  remembrance  is  priceless.  How  often 
does  one  voice  speak  to  us  across  the 
distance  of  dreams  !  How  often  through 
their  tinted  haze  do  we  see  one  form  ! 
I  would  hardly  believe  that  these  were 
wholly  illusions,  though  that  voice  itself 
should  tell  me;  to  do  so  were  to  take  the 
first  and  irrevocable  step  to  the  moral 
helplessness  of  disillusion,  for  they  are 
a  link  with  all  beauty.  Nor  this  one  form 
only,  but  the  other  fairest  souls  and  most 
beautiful  of  human  shapes  to  which  his 
tory  and  art  and  imagination  have  given 


CHAPTER. 
Ill 


128 


Cbe  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


Birthdays 


birth — Socrates,  with  his  toad-like  form 
and  god-like  nature,  and  Galahad,  that 
lgood  man  of  his  hands'  who  was  also 
found  pure,  and  the  lady  Mary  of  Naz 
areth,  the  model  of  veiled  sisterhoods 
and  'ladies  bright  in  bower,'  in  whom  are 
the  first  and  last  of  all  womanly  ideals 
—  these  too  have  shed  the  radiance  of 
their  presence  and  left  the  ring  of  their 
voices  in  my  dreams  :  am  I,  then,  to  value 
these  latter,  so  rare  and  so  wonderful, 
less  than  the  vulgarities  which  are  my 
waking  thoughts  ? 

WHEN  I  was  a  boy  I  began  to 
compile  an  almanac  of  the  birth 
days  of  my  loved  heroes,  poets,  saints, 
and  beautiful  women.  I  used  to  print  the 
names  of  my  battle-heroes  in  red,  the  hue 
of  the  blood  which  they  shed;  the  names 
of  poets  in  green,  the  colour  of  the  fields 
which  they  loved ;  the  names  of  women 
in  blue — was  it  not  the  colour  of  their 
eyes?  and  the  names  of  the  saints  in  all 
three,  for  in  them  were  united  the  valour 
of  the  soldier  and  the  high  thoughts  of  the 
singer  and  the  devotion  passing  the  love 
of  women.  For  a  time  these  days  were  my 
festivals,  and  upon  the  vigil  of  each  it  was 


oft&e^oon 


129 


my  custom  to  ponder  over  the  immensity 
of  issues  which  lay  behind  the  curtain  of 
the  morrow.  Upon  the  i  oth  of  November 
in  the  year  1483,  a  tiny  animal  of  con 
temptible  weakness  and  fragility  was  born 
at  Eisleben  in  Thuringia;  upon  the  I5th 
of  August  in  the  year  1769,  an  animal 
tinier  still,  of  even  less  apparent  signifi 
cance,  was  born  at  Ajaccio.  Yet  the 
great  Papal  power  would  have  trembled 
at  the  birth  of  the  first,  and  powers 
greater  than  the  Pope  at  the  birth  of  the 
second,  had  they  foreseen  to  what  world- 
stature  these  two  would  grow;  for  they 
were  Luther  and  Napoleon.  But  after 
a  while  I  began  to  see  that,  however 
portentous  to  the  world  may  be  the  birth 
of  a  giant  soul,  a  greater  significance  to 
the  soul  itself  lies  in  its  passing  from 
the  earth  by  death.  This  simple  transi 
tion  round  which  man  has  grouped,  like 
ghastly  statuary,  his  most  stupendous 
thoughts,  his  gravest  emblems  of  mys 
tery  and  extinction,  this,  as  I  told  my 
self,  is  of  no  greater  moment  in  itself 
than  a  birth,  of  infinitely  less  moment 
than  a  marriage,  but  from  its  conse 
quences  it  draws  an  adventitious  impor 
tance  which  makes  it  our  wonder  and 


CHAPTER. 

Ill 


130 


Cbe 


CHAPTER 
III 


Nunc  dimittis 


our  bewilderment.  From  one  point  of 
view  it  is  true,  as  Spinoza  told  us,  that 
'  Death  is  the  most  insignificant  event  of 
life,  absolutely  without  effect  on  charac 
ter,  and  utterly  incapable  of  influencing 
an  eternal  destiny.'  From  another  point 
of  view,  death  is  the  parting  of  the  last 
link  in  the  fetters  of  our  strange  human 
dualism,  the  vanishing  of  the  familiar 
harbour-lights,  the  passing  of  the  Pillars 
of  Hercules.  We  watch  our  friends,  when 
they  start  upon  a  sea  voyage,  until  their 
ship  is  hull-down  upon  the  horizon;  it 
is  thus  that  I  muse  over  the  death,  and 
no  longer  the  birth,  of  the  mailed  fighters 
good  at  need  and  the  saintly  hearts  whose 
battles  were  won  in  silence  and,  alas ! 
(cannot  we  pity  them  most  of  all  in  this?) 
often  in  comradeless  gloom. 

A  DYING  man  told  me  that  he  no 
longer  feared  death  (as  if  that  were 
so  great  a  matter  for  congratulation!), but 
that  he  thought  it  hard  not  to  live  a  little 
longer  in  this  beautiful  world.  I  asked 
him,  'Have  you  once  seen  the  sunrise 
on  the  craters  of  the  moon  ?  Or  have 
you  once  heard  the  birds'  song  in  dark 
spring  dawns?  Then  do  you  not  yet  know 


oftfje 


the  spirit  of  the  Nunc  Dimittis  ?  '  Not 
only  these, but  countless  wonderful  sights 
and  sounds  have  been  given  for  our  plea 
sure;  Nature  has  been  our  lavish  mis 
tress  ;  can  we  pout  and  call  her  niggard, 
because  she  sends  us  on  an  unknown 
quest?  Ought  we  not  rather  to  take  our 
leave  of  her  like  bold  knights  errant,  with 
hearts  trusting  in  our  Gloriana  ?  Count 
less  worlds  are  fellow-ad  venturers  with  us: 
whither  we  are  going  matters  nothing, 
nor  whence;  it  is  enough  that  here  we 
are  permitted  to  see  a  wonder  of  beauty 
before  we  yield  our  place  to  others.  Even 
if  we  are  to  endure  ages  of  suffering 
greater  than  is  conceivable  by  the  hu 
man  mind,  we  shall  still  be  in  debt  to 
Nature. 

Let  us,  then,  go  to  death  as  the  gulls 
swoop  to  the  waves  after  stormy  weather 
—  with  a  cry  of  'The  Sea!'  and  the 
laughter  of  a  soul  long  pent  inland. 

I  WALKED  through  the  black  abyss 
es  of  shadow  which  the  cypresses  cast 
on  the  ground;  for  the  moon  had  risen. 
The  cypress  has  that  monstrous  and  dae 
monic  character  which  belongs  to  the 
scenery  of  the  Apocalypse  and  of  dreams. 


CHAPTER 

III 


The  cypress 


132 


Cfre 


CHAPTER 
III 


Suetonius,  in  a  phrase  like  a  thunderclap, 
speaks  of  the  Emperor  Claudius  as  a 
prodigy  of  a  man  (portentum  hominis}, 
and  the  expression  returns  inevitably  to 
my  mind  at  the  sight  of  a  cypress  —  por 
tentum  arboris.  Other  trees  have  a  dispo 
sition,  the  cypress  hasacharac-ter;  other 
trees  have  emotions,  but  in  the  cypress  Is 
incarnate  the  inhuman  tranquillity  of  fate. 
A  clump  of  almost  any  other  trees  delights 
the  eye  like  a  bevy  of  beautiful  women ; 
to  meet  with  a  clump  of  cypresses  is  like 
meeting  a  bronze  group  of  the  Parcae. 
Every  school  of  philosophy  has  its  disci 
ples  among  the  trees.  We  thinkof  the  oak 
as  self-sufficient  and  a  Stoic,  the  pine  as 
an  ascetic  on  the  mountains, 'whose  heads 
touch  heaven,'  the  poplar  as  a  subjective 
spirit  wrapped  in  dreams;  but  the  cypress 
is  the  saturnine  and  cynical  witness  of 
those  momentary  pomps  and  fading  em 
blazonries  by  which  the  world  fans  itself 
into  a  flutter  of  optimism.  For,  being 
planted, as  it  is,  round  the  churches  where 
men  and  women  go  through  the  stately 
rites  of  marriage  and  where  their  children 
are  joyfully  baptized,  yet  —  passionless 
spectator  of  a  tragedy  whose  crisis  is 
never  reached,  dusky  sentinel  over  the 


oftfre^oon 


illimitable  fields  of  death,  it  has  been  for 
centuries  the  symbol  of  mortality,  the 
tutelary  genius  of  that  last  irony  in  the 
drama  of  worldly  existence,  the  burial  of 
unconquerable  Man. 

I  WALKED  home  by  the  river,  whose 
serpentine  shape  the  wind  and  moon 
were  covering  with  scales;  past  the  hill 
ocks  between  which  mist  always  lies  like 
water  in  the  palm  of  a  giant  hand;  past 
the  poplars,  ghostly  effigies  that  were 
now  black,  now  white,  as  the  breeze 
raised  and  fondled  and  jilted  their  leaves; 
under  the  hills,  stretched  like  recumbent 
beasts  in  a  landscape  of  neutral  tints; 
hearing  the  peewit's  sorry  lament;  crum 
pling  the  leaves  which  made  in  their  death 
such  a  fair  Byzantine  mosaic  upon  the 
road  that  I  almost  forgot  to  look  for  the 
Gothic  tracery  of  branches  overhead.  For 
the  last  hours  before  the  dawn  wood  and 
meadow  reserve  their  most  potent  magic, 
for  then  the  night  is  telling  her  secrets 
to  her  lovers — to  the  owls  and  moths 
and  the  voluble  spirits  of  trees  and  run 
ning  water — to  man  and  woman,  if  they 
will  but  stop  to  listen  to  her  undertones. 
In  an  hour  the  sky  will  be  over-clouded; 


CHAPTER 

in 


Night 


Cbe  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


The  clouds 


from  the  western  horizon  a  cloud  is 
flying  over  the  plain  like  the  he-goat 
in  Daniel's  vision,  that  lcame  from  the 
west  on  the  face  of  the  whole  earth,  and 
touched  not  the  ground.' 

THE  clouds  bring  us  in  their  deep 
and  silent  hearts  the  same  happi 
ness  finely  coloured  with  melancholy  as 
the  high  rapture  of  music,  or  the  as 
piration  of  philosophy,  or  the  tremor  of 
poetry,  or  the  memory  of  a  lovely  dream. 
Among  all  that  earth  can  show  of  pure 
and  beautiful  forms  they  are  the  purest, 
yet  also  the  strongest  in  their  appeal  to 
the  one  sense  by  which  they  are  percepti 
ble.  Where  else  upon  the  earth  are  there 
these  million  variations  upon  Nature's 
most  heavenly  theme,  the  melody  of  the 
curve  ?  Where  is  there  such  a  fulfilment 
of  the  delicacy  and  gradual  variation 
which  Burke  demanded  as  inalienable 
conditions  of  beauty?  Where  such  'a 
spirit-like  feeling,  a  capricious  mocking 
imagery  of  passion  and  life,'  as  makes  of 
the  shapes  of  heaven  ironical  symbols 
and  wraiths  of  the  shapes  of  earth?  Those 
skiffs  with  vanishing  sails  and  galleons 
freighted  with  transoceanic  wealth,  des- 


oft&e^oon 


tined  to  reach  no  harbour,  but  only  to 
pass  through  the  cycles  of  existence  as 
ghostly  derelicts  of  the  sky,  are  Nature's 
arch  parody  of  human  fortunes.  It  was 
thus  that  the  Immortals  laughed  at  man 
to  teach  him  wisdom.  I  never  see  one  of 
these  sylphid  forms  trailing  robes  golden 
in  sunlight  or  silvered  over  by  the  moon 
without  thinking  of  the  tale  of  Ixion — 
surely  one  of  the  saddest  (in  the  parabo 
lic  significance  which  is  so  easily  attached 
to  it)  of  all  the  sad  Hellenic  mythology. 
The  story,  strong  in  the  irony  of  all  solar 
myths,  is  the  very  tragedy  of  human 
idealism  in  brief.  The  love  of  Ixion,  the 
radiant  sun,  for  Hera,  the  large-eyed, 
the  white-stoled,  the  queen  of  the  ether, 
the  wife  of  Zeus;  her  contempt  of  his 
passion;  how  she  enticed  him  by  the 
cloud  shaped  in  woman's  delicate  form 
and  veiled  with  airy  vestures  like  her  own; 
how,  when  Ixion,  at  the  beginning  of 
his  weary  ascent  of  heaven,  came  upon 
the  white  shape  dreaming  above  the  hill 
tops,  and  rushed  to  clasp  it  in  his  arms, 
it  faded  away,  yet  returned  when  he  had 
passed  the  spot;  how  he  lingered  near  it 
(what  lover  would  not?)  until  he  was 
caught  and  bound  for  ever  to  the  revolv- 


CHAPTER 

in 


Ixion 


136 


Cfre  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


The  wind 


ing  wheel  as  a  punishment  of  his  pre 
sumptuous  passion  for  an  Immortal:  this 
is  the  history,  all  too  veracious,  of  many 
a  soul  that  is  passionate  at  its  wooing 
and  many  pure  ideals  that  are  never  won. 

ON  this  afternoon  the  west  wind  is 
racing  down  from  the  hills  across 
twenty  miles  of  open  country  and  break 
ing  on  the  window  in  solid  billows.  I 
can  see  each  squall  tear  at  the  limbs  of 
a  great  beech  on  the  sky-line  a  mile  away, 
snatching  from  them  handfuls  of  leaves; 
a  minute  later  it  is  screaming  round  the 
tall  firs  close  to  the  house.  Two  rooks, 
whom  hunger  or  the  spirit  of  adventure 
has  tempted  to  try  their  fortune  on  the 
walnut-tree  in  the  little  orchard,  are  beat 
ing  up  for  their  third  attempt  at  a  land 
ing.  When  they  have  come  to  an  anchor, 
they  fix  their  beaks  in  a  walnut  and  throw 
themselves  headlong  from  the  branch ; 
the  hurricane  and  the  law  of  gravitation 
do  the  rest,  though  ungracefully.  How  I 
welcome  these  equinoctial  gales,  which 
bring  days  of  Bacchantic  revelling  in  the 
woods — weeks  of  revelling  and  witches' 
sabbaths  !  Again  it  is  early  in  October, 
the  polychrome  month  of  the  year,  and 


of  t&e 


137 


I  have  been  listening  for  an  hour  to  the 
declamation  of  a  certain  poplar.  It  is 
at  this  season  that  the  most  reticent  of 
trees  throws  off  its  mask  of  reserve  and 
joins  with  its  comrades  in  shouting  its 
secrets  across  a  shouting  countryside.  I 
have  often  stood  on  a  windy  night  about 
twelve  paces  to  leeward  from  three  of 
these  monumental  figures  of  Nature's 
modelling,  and  watched  them  curl  over 
their  black  plumage,  the  home  of  unut 
terable  woes ;  those  bowed  and  despair 
ing  crests  are  the  emblems  of  Life-in- 
Death,  as  the  cypress  is  the  emblem  of 
Death  himself.  It  has  been  said,  4We 
only  see  poplars  in  the  sunset ;  they  ap 
pear  with  the  bats  and  the  first  stars.'* 
In  the  lulls  of  the  hurricane  they  croon 
together,  nodding  wise  heads  over  what 
we  must  suppose  to  be  their  peculiar  met 
aphysical  problems.  At  such  times  the 
song  of  the  poplar,  more  mournful  in 
the  depth  of  its  moaning  than  the  mon 
ody  of  the  reed-maiden  Syrinx,  and  in 
its  multitudinary  chorus  of  sadness  more 
impressive  than  the  singing  together  of 
the  morning  stars,  is  a  chaunt  the  most 
noble  and  the  most  harrowing  of  all  the 
inexhaustible  psalmody  of  Nature.  For 


CHAPTER 

in 

The  poplar 


•George 

Moore,  E-velyt 
Innes. 


138 


C6e  Silences 


CHAPTER 
III 


its  voice  is  the  composite  voice  of  a  hun 
dred  thousand  leaves,  each  having  its 
own  tiny  personality.  Imagine  all  hu 
manity  to  be  built  up  into  a  single  in 
dividual  being,  a  breathing  colossus  of 
loves  and  hatreds  more  innumerable  than 
the  sand  of  the  shore,  possessed  of  the 
accents  of  Memnon  and  the  stature  of 
a  Sphinx  :  to  such  a  colossus,  bowing  be 
neath  infinite  reduplication  of  woes,  the 
poplar  would  be  the  natural  prototype. 
Upon  a  gusty  day  like  this  it  is  full  of  ca 
prices,  ruffling  the  silence  with  humour- 
some  shouts;  at  midnight,  when  the  wind 
has  nearly  dropped,  it  will  be  a  campa 
nile  of  melodious,  sorrowful  chimes. 

WHILE  I  have  been  writing  these 
poor  thoughts,  upon  which  the 
tolerant  smile  of  one  long  gone  hence 
sheds  their  only  glory,!  have  seen  Nature 
in  all  her  familiar  aspects.  I  have  seen  the 
childlike  face  of  the  country  in  spring, 
smiling  through  tears  as  it  was  said  of 
Andromache,  Sa/cpudev  ycXao-acra:  in  sum 
mer,  when  the  buttercups  paint  our  Eng 
land  like  the  plains  of  El  Dorado:  in 
autumn,  when  the  fire  has  died  out  of 
the  heart  of  the  year,  leaving  it  happy  in 


oftbe^oon 


139 


motherhood;  when  wind  and  rain  are 
making  their  progress  through  the  land, 
dragging  grey  skirts  over  the  hills :  in  the 
night  of  winter,  with  the  earth  clad  in  her 
white  vesture  and  radiant  in  sleep.  The 
seasons  roll  past;  the  stars  rise  and  set. 
Just  now,  when  I  sat  down  to  write  these 
last  pages,  I  heard  the  noisy  homecoming 
of  the  birds  and  saw  the  setting  of  the 
blood-red  sun — or,  as  our  Aryan  fathers 
said,  when  they  gazed  awefully  upon  the 
same  sight,  I  saw  Indra  dyeing  the  heavens 
with  the  gore  of  Vritra.  Now  the  light  has 
gone  and  the  wind  has  gone ;  candles  are 
lit,  the  bats  are  squeaking  round  the  fir- 
tops,  and  the  moon  is  alighting  upon  the 
Welsh  hills  with  the  same  noiseless  tread 
as  when  she  stole  over  the  slopes  of 
Mount  Latmos  in  search  of  young  Endy- 
mion.  How,  think  you,  has  the  world 
changed  since  those  days  of  Indra  and 
Vritra,  Dian  and  Endymion?  Just  as 
much  and  as  little  as  it  has  changed  since 
I  lit  my  candles,  so  far  as  I  am  con 
cerned  :  for  did  I  not  love  before 
the  dawn  of  Time,  and 
do  I  not  love 
still? 


CHAPTER 
HI 


APOLOGIA  DIFFIDENTIS 

BY  W.  COMPTON  LEITH 

PRESS  OPINIONS 

The  book  has  high  literary  merit ;  the  style  is  full  of  melody 
and  colour,  and  the  rich  dreamy  sentences  rise  into  the  air 
like  wreaths  of  fragrant  incense  smoke.  But  there  is  an  inner 
charm  as  well ;  the  book  comes,  one  feels,  from  the  heart, 
and  is  the  expression  of  a  refined  and  tender  nature  forced, 
or  at  all  events  believing  itself  forced,  into  a  reluctant  renun 
ciation  of  the  very  qualities  which  lend  to  life  its  inner  glow. 

SATURDAY  REVIEW. 

Mr.  Leith'g  literary  style  is  truly  admirable ;  it  is  elegance 
touched  by  fire.  His  metaphors  are  novel  and  striking;  and 
the  "viewless  wind"  has  not  blown  the  Greek  spirit  on  him 
in  vain.  DAILY  CHRONICLE. 

A  genuine  contribution  to  literature. ...  A  sincere  and  often 
beautiful  attempt  to  depict  the  character  of  a  sensitive  self- 
conscious  Ishmael.  TIMES. 

Mr.  Leith  has  written  a  very  beautiful  book,  and  perhaps 
the  publisher's  claim  that  this  will  prove  a  new  classic  is  not 
too  bold.  DAILY  MAIL. 

Open  the  book  where  we  may,  the  intellect  is  at  once  ar 
rested  and  quickened. ...  It  is  a  human  document,  a  literary 
achievement.  OBSERVER. 

A  singularly  beautiful  and  interesting  book.  DAILY  GRAPHIC. 

To  pick  up  this  book  at  any  point  is  to  feel  that  we  are  in 
a  rare  atmosphere ;  that  here  is  someone  who  feels  that 
words  have  value,  and  who  has  a  view  of  life  which  he  can 
not  do  otherwise  than  communicate.  DAILY  NEWS. 

His  English  is  graceful,  gracious,  fluent,  and  beautiful.  His 
theme  is  at  once  original  and  appealing,  and  the  combination 
of  matter  and  manner  proves  irresistible.  ...  A  sincere  and 
masterly  piece  of  prose  creation.  MANCHESTER  COURIER. 

A  really  admirable  analysis  of  the  sensations  and  the  emo 
tions  of  the  shy  man. .  . .  Mr.  Compton  Leith  has  a  fine  feel 
ing  for  literature,  genuine  distinction  of  style  —  all  the  virtues 
most  to  be  admired  in  an  age  of  slipshod  writing.  ACADEMY. 


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